browse keys (@bk)

[John Esak]

> > >I'm giving up now. I really don't feel the need to be involved with
> > >a package that's designed so differently from every other procedural
> > >programming on the planet that it allows me to look foolish
> once a week,
> > >saying "oh, they couldn't possibly be so dumb as to have made it work
> > >like *that*; that's crazy stuff.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > I find it interesting that you so vehemently defend your right to hold
> > your opinions while claiming that the opinions and decision of
> > programmers who have more years of experience  and have programmed
> > professionally in at least as many languages are "dumb" and "crazy".
> >
> > One of the interesting things I was told early on regarding claims of
> > experience is that they don't have much value. Some people can have 5
> > years experience and other people can have 1 years experience 5 times.
> > With a little bit of effort you can tell one from the other.
> >
> > I had done a significant amount of Forth programming before I learned C
> > and the necessary and somewhat shocking shift in thinking taught me
> > right away not to expect one programming language to be, or be like,
> > another. In some ways learning a new programming language is not
> > significantly different from learning a new (foreign) language. I might
> > expect languages in the same family, Romance languages for example, to
> > share common features but I wouldn't expect Hebrew and Spanish
> to follow
> > the same rules.
> >
> > One of the decisions every programmer makes when confronted with a new
> > language is "can I be productive enough in this language to make it
> > worth the effort of learning the language".  Certainly crossover skills
> > are a factor in this decision  but it's shortsighted to allow
> them to be
> > the only factor.  Sometime the answer to the question is yes, sometimes
> > the answer is no. You are certainly entitled to answer no for any
> > language but that does not make people who decide yes, or the language
> > designers, "crazy" or "dumb".
> >
> > For the record, I've been working for Small and .... and ... and
> > fPTechnologies since 1988, when I wrote the browse lookup code, and I'm
> > not sure I would have made the same decisions that the earlier
> > programmers (Ken among them) made with respect to language design or
> > code organization but I respect them and their skills enough to know
> > that those decisions were made by extremely intelligent and highly
> > skilled programmers.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Filepro-list mailing list
> > Filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> > http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/filepro-list
> >
>
> Ron,
>
> Very well put.
>
> John
>
>
> I have programmed since 1964, doing Scientific, Real-Time and Software
> engineering. I have both hareware and software experience, writing I/O
> Drivers and Disk Operation systems, along with diagnosing Hardware
> problems down to the malfunctioning gate. I have experience on several
> dozens of operating systems. I have experience in Assembler, Fortran,
> Cobol, C and Filepro. Most of my experience on filePro dates to 1985.
> Until 1999 it was in version 1.0 and 3.0 on the Dec VAX which was
> no longer supported by filePro. As a result some of the filePro feature
> did not work. For example. I could not define, non-filePro files. Given
> what I had to work with I found that there was no task that I could not
> do one way or another. Since 1999 I have been programming in version
> 4.8 and higher. Thus there are features I am still learning.
>
> What continues to amaze me is the power of the filePro language and
> how well designed it is.  Often Operating Systems and Languages are
> designed by people with very little applications experience. I find that
> filePro and those who designed it are an exception to this.
>
> John

John,
May I add a very well put to your note as well.

Jay has the ongoing nerve to defend most things he says with the fact that
he has worked for 20 years as a programmer... He never seems to allow that
others may have worked that long in the field or longer... and even if they
have, his comment as above if they disagree with him is that they are
"dumb", or stupid, or incompetent, clueless, etc. It has gotten very old and
it is much appreciated that you comment on Ron's note, and share som ef your
own expertise here. Jay will ignore it, he always does, but more and more
people know to ignore his postings these days anyway. Hearing the grossly
offensive things he said about filePro and its programmers in the last
couple notes he put up, is just about the end of patience for me....
procmail and the like are the only resort.

One of the owners of filePro told me the other day that he doesn't come on
the list anymore because every time he does, he gets beat up so badly by a
couple/few of the people here. Such a shame that those reading this list
can't be civil and decent. I'm VERY glad Ron stood up for himself and the FP
team, I wish Ken would once in awhile, but that is not his way. As for the
rest of us, I believe it is up to us... Eventually, Jay and the others like
him who only have a desire to bash filePro will get tired of being ignored
and move on to other places... (that will eventually also shun their brand
of insulting criticism.)

John Esak