Date   : Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:33:09 -0000
From   : mark@... (Mark Usher)
Subject: No wonder CompSci graduates are unemployed

The problem is, cobbling together some of these workarounds isn't
supportable in the long term and creates even more of a mess. 12months down
the line, you have left, no one has a clue how the RISC PC / PDF bit works
anymore, one of the cables on the veroboard has come loose and there isn't
the skill in house to fix it. I always have to work on a minimum of 5 year,
100% supportability - but I also appreciate I have larger budgets to do it
with.

Many of these problems I just throw back at the vendor, I bought it, it
doesn't work as should, fix it properly. I know this isn't always possible
and some workarounds can be very efficient. It all comes down to the scale,
implementation and cost factors. Too many businesses try to buy cheap, but
just dig themselves in deeper. We all know cheap isn't always cost effective
in the long term, and god knows I've had to redesign plenty of
infrastructure done like that because it's been workaround on workaround. If
only they'd done it right in the first place. 

While I do enjoy thinking of ways to overcome problems, to be honest, I
don't think I really would want to go back to cobbling together workarounds
and working like that. It seems a little too amateurish for the market place
I work with. Maybe I'm just getting older, but I do find I am tending to
just want things that work and not have to faff about. 

By the way, splitting a name on the first space is a very poor way of
denormalising a name. Yes, it would save some time, but the resulting list
would still need to be checked and probably amended manually.

-M


> -----Original Message-----
> From: bbc-micro-bounces+mark=bbcdocs.com@...
> [mailto:bbc-micro-bounces+mark=bbcdocs.com@...] On
> Behalf Of J.G.Harston
> Sent: 03 November 2010 08:54
> To: bbc-micro@...
> Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] No wonder CompSci graduates are unemployed
> 
> Rick Murray wrote:
> > 1. Proprietary database, runs in DOS, saves in mangled weird unknown
> 
> Secretary: I'm going to be busy all afternoon because I've got to go
through
> the membership list splitting peoples' names into firstname and surname.
> 
> Me: Save as CSV, BBC BASIC proggy that replaces the first space with a
> comma, reload into Excel. Done in about 30 seconds.
> 
> JGH
> 
> 
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