Re: wise words

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 16:21:24 GMT
Message-ID: <8gmbg.9838$A26.244194@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

Erwin wrote:
> Bob Badour wrote:
>

>>I stumbled across some wise words that resonate with me at
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs quoted from Eric S.
>>Raymond:
>>
>>"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase
>>that is just good enough."
>>
>>He was talking about Bell Labs' attempt to replace Unix with a better
>>unix-like OS. But his words ring just as true for SQL and a host of
>>other computing languages.

>
> A database scientist and a database engineer are walking side by side
> on the street. They see a beautiful woman on the other side, and want
> to cross the street, but then someone tells them that if they're
> heading for that beautiful woman, they can only do so by traveling each
> time only half of the remaining distance.
>
> Says the scientist : "Well, if that's so, then there's no point in
> trying, for I know I'll never get there", and he goes on.
> Says the engineer : "Well, I know equally well I'll never actually get
> there, but at any rate, I'll surely get close enough", and he got the
> girl.
>
> My point : technical purity is not everything.

Neither is fallacious reasoning.

   Replacing something
> that's "good enough" with something that's better will only be done if
> that replacement can be expected to give an acceptable return on the
> investment required. If that cannot reasonably be expected, then any
> sensible person (and that includes you, Bob) will stick with what's
> "good enough".

Your argument has a flaw related to primate psychology. We silly monkeys place greater value on what we have than on what we can get.

See:
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002849.html

> With apologies to the female part of the audience for the male
> chauvinist pig attitude implied in the joke.

I suggest you owe a greater debt to the scientist part of the audience. Coming from an engineering background myself, I was always fond of the joke about the engineering student and the medical student. Received on Fri May 19 2006 - 11:21:24 CDT