How can engineers not understand source-code control?

Mark Carter mcturra2000 at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Jan 4 10:52:03 EST 2005


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Cameron Laird wrote:

 > Well *that* certainly made my morning unpleasant.

Then let's see if I can spoil you afternoon, too ...

I was working on a project (that used Excel, alas) that checked the 
daily allocation of oil and gas. The calculations were very complicated, 
and liable to error. I thought it would be a good idea if I serialised 
intermediate calculations so they could be checked. My solution was to 
save them as a CSV file, with array name in the first column, index 
variables in subsequent columns, and array value in the last column. 
That way, they could be checked manually. The standard approach at my 
company would have been to create honking big spreadsheets to house 
these values.

Anyway, time went on, it was decided that these daily calculations 
needed to be aggregated to monthly values. Well, it turned out that the 
solution I had adopted was quite good, because one could just suck the 
file in, read off the relevant variables, and populate an array. To be 
compared with what would normally happen of creating a nexus of links to 
a disk-busting collection of spreadsheets.

I shall have my revenge, though. The file serve hierarchy that we have 
is very complicated, and is due for simplification in the very near 
future. So all those peeps who did spreadsheets, with hard links to 
other spreadsheets, are in for a bit of a surprise. I think the I-Ching 
expressed it better than I ever could:
The bird's nest burns up.
The wanderer laughs at first,
Then must needs lament and weep.
Through carelessness he loses his cow.
Misfortune.

Source:
http://www.eclecticenergies.com/iching/hexagram.php?nr=56

I'm thinking that the I-Ching is a vast untapped resource for 
programming wisdom, plus it makes it funny. Or haikus, maybe they'd be 
good.



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