runtime vs development filepro

[Laura Brody]

On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:22:02 -0400, Fairlight <fairlite at fairlite.com>  
wrote:

> Simon--er, no...it was Laura Brody--said:
>> With this, Ken slammed down the phone -- this was the first
>> time I ever saw Ken lose his temper (now that we have 4 kids,
>> so it's now almost a daily occurance, but I digress).
>> He then went over to the computer, made the changes to
>> the "make tape" script, made the tape and stomped down
>> to shipping while mumbling unkind things about this
>> customer's IQ. The rest of us stood there in programming
>> with our jaws on the floor and quickly decided that today
>> would be a bad day to ask Ken for anything .....
>
> Customer's IQ notwithstanding, how hard is it to make the switch from  
> cpio to tar?  :)

	Trivial. It took him less than 1 minute to edit the
"make tape" script. It took the computer longer to actually
make the tape.

> Methinks it was a principle thing, which I would be the first to  
> understand, believe me.

	Bingo. The so-and-so customer simply refused to type
the command. It wasn't that he didn't have cpio on his
system, he just didn't want to do it. It would have been
SOOOO much easier if he just applied his fingers to the
keyboard as per the install instructions than it would
be for us to change the install script, make the tape,
and ship it to him.

	Our position was "if we do this, what is the next
round of customized stupidity are we going to have to
deal with?" We were understaffed, overworked and we
simply don't have then extra time to make these kinds
of changes just because a customer refuses to type the
command line we give him. Our focus was writing C code
for the next version of filePro and to fix stuff on the
bug list as fast as we could. What was next? Print
the install instructions on fortune cookies? Translate
the program into Yugoslavian? (Actully, this really
happened... just in time for Yugoslavia to fall apart
and our contact on the other side of the pond to run
off with some SCC money and disappear. If fP Tech
wanted to translate filePro into another language
which doesn't require unicode would not be very
difficult at all -- I think that with the number of
Spanish speakers in the US, this may be something to
look into.) Just hand the files that end in ".z" to
a translator and let them edit them, recompile the filePro
programs, test, tweak and ship. Translating the manual
would be the killer.

> Funny anecdote though...thanks for sharing!

	There are plenty more where that came from....

-- 
Laura Brody, Publisher of the filePro Developer's Journal
+------------- Hudson Valley Computer Associates, Inc ----------+
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