Re: Navigation question

From: Marshall <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: 14 Feb 2007 14:40:15 -0800
Message-ID: <1171492815.657233.35980_at_j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>


On Feb 14, 12:21 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
> > On Feb 14, 7:43 am, "dawn" <dawnwolth..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>Application software typically reads data from a
> >>database, takes a foreign key value, and reads in other data.
>
> > Ewww! Certainly *bad* software does that, but good software
> > doesn't. Part of my job description is smacking noobs who do
> > the above with a large, migratory fish. Salmon is my favorite.
>
> Arctic char. It's a little like salmon only way better.

I don't have any theory to back this up, but the thing that seems to make the difference is fresh water vs. salt water. The salt water fish are overkill; if you hit every summer intern or newhire who writes stupid code with a marlin or a sturgeon, they just fall over dead and the learning opportunity is lost. Whereas if you use a trout they just laugh. The salmon is the perfect middle ground, and it seems more than a coincidence that it spends part of its time in fresh water and part in salt.

Hmmm. The salmon splits the difference between fresh and salt by time, over its lifecycle. I wonder if you could get similarly good results from a creature that splits the difference in salinity? For example, would it work as well to dump a bucket of brine shrimp over someone's head?

As an aside, I only use fish for architecture problems. For processes issues, I use a different approach. For quite some time I told my group that anyone who checked in code that didn't compile and thereby broke the build would get a visit from me wherein I would sing, in a booming voice, the song "Bright Elusive Butterfly of Love."

Marshall

PS. "Don't be concerned. It will not harm you." Received on Wed Feb 14 2007 - 23:40:15 CET

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