OT: Filemaker 8

[Tyler]

>
>         In my mind, this respose tells me that your goal here is
> to argue, not to learn. The old saying "Don't try to teach a
> pig to sing. It is a waste of time for you and it only annoys
> the pig". I am done trying to explain this to you. You obviously
> prefer to remain clueless and my clue-by-four is in the shop.


Funny, I thought the same thing when you said it the first time around.  Why
is it ok for you to say it to me, but not me to you?

        And how often do you NEED to create a Fibonacci sequence?
> The current gosub call limit of 64. In my experience, if you are
> calling a gosub more than 20 times in a row, you are probably
> stuck in an infinite loop due to a bug in your processing code.


I wouldn't have found out about the limit if I hadn't been trying to create
a recursive function, so obviously I do it fairly often.  Recursion is an
extremely common programming technique.  If there's a bug in the code and
I'm in an infinite loop, I don't think a hardcoded limit of subroutine calls
is the best solution for catching it - and that's a programmer's
responsibilty anyway, not the development platform's.  If it is the
development platform's, then why doesn't it limit the number of GOTOs to a
label?  That's where I generally find myself in an infinite loop due to a
bug.

> But ODBC has been around a long time now too: "Microsoft created ODBC by
> adapting the SQL Access Group CLI. It released ODBC 1.0 in September,
> 1992"  So, almost fourteen years.  Not exactly a new technology,
> either.  Oracle was founded in 1979, and it has managed to tack on
> ODBC.  PostGres was at demo stage in 1986, and they have ODBC too - and it's
> not even a commercial product.  So I don't think it's rather too much to
> ask, given that it's an IT industry standard as well (not just 'expected to
> have').
> >
>
>         filePro predates ODBC by more than 10 years. SQL is totally
> different from filePro. The only thing they have in common is that
> they store data on computers. Everything else is different.


So what?  There's an fpSQL module.  HTTP is totally different from filePro,
but there is an fpCGI module.  My point was just that other database
products that have been around as long as fP and/or before ODBC was a
standard and they've managed to adapt.  They may have had an advantage in
that it they were already SQL based, but even very limited functionality
could probably have been achieved by fPTech in the last 14 years.

        Anyone who has been on this list for more than a week usually
> picks up on the fact that Ken is the lead filePro programmer. He and
> I have the same last name. The filePro mailing list is rather small.
> You dissed my husband and I took great offense. It isn't exactly a
> stretch to put 2 and 2 together here.


I haven't a clue how large the list is, I've never seen the list of
adressees on it.  Generally I only read the digest items that have
interesting subject lines, and when I find personal or political text I skip
over it.  I don't usually pay much attention to the author or from field as
they can change too easily on message boards/mailing lists and they
generally don't matter to someone just reading the text.  Analyzing mailing
lists to find out who's related to whom in what way has never been of
interest to me, and you could just as easily have been a mother, sister, or
cousin as a wife.  Or anybody at all - Brody isn't the most unique name in
the universe.  Why would I bother trying to string that together on what I
thought was basically a developer's forum?

        Ken answers questions on this mailing list (usually as in between
> code compiles) because he likes to help out. It isn't on his job
> description and he isn't paid extra for it. When it comes to filePro,
> he is front and center and giving it 110%, so the "lazy" comment
> (surprise, surprise) pissed me off.


Fine, it pissed you off.  Way to go off on something that wasn't addressed
at him personally by someone who admitted that they didn't know much about
fpTech and was voicing how it looked to an outsider/relativenewcomer to fP.
It's nice that Ken does all those things, but I knew zip about him prior to
this correspondance.  Why not take that into consideration?  Lots of people
are not hugely insulated in a filePro oriented world where they live,
breathe, and eat it, and know the core app developers on a deep and personal
level.  In fact, lots of people use filePro simply because it's part of
their job and really couldn't care less about it except for irritatoin at
having to work around it's limitations when they bump into them.  It's a
tool, not a lifestyle.

        I think that the consensus is that you are ignorant,
> clueless, rude and a pain in the ass. To continue to attempt
> to educate you is a waste of my time. You sound like a excellent
> candidate for a Darwin Award. Please don't tell me that you
> have already reproduced.


Oddly enough, I've received several emails seconding the things I've been
saying, though some haven't cross-mailed to the list.  And I'm ignorant
about lots of things.  fP culture and inner company workings.  Ancient Aztec
religious practices.  Cisco router programming.  Politics in Zimbabwe.  What
I do know of, say, human sacrifice, gives me an opinion on it nonetheless
that I'm sure an Aztec priest would find just as offensive and ill informed
as you did mine on why server-oriented ODBC isn't part of the fP database
backend offerings.  But I'm neither clueless nor uneducated/uneducable.  I'm
definitely a pain in the ass, though, as I am both stubborn and not
particularly respectful of authority unless it's demonstrated it's worthy of
it.

You've lost any moral high ground with the ad hominem attacks, btw.

        I am more aware of the lacks of filePro than most people
> since I was part of the development team for 8 years, married
> the lead programmer, have written filePro utilities in filePro,
> replacement online help files and a printed quick reference
> guide. I know the internals of filePro and know what can be
> added easily, added with great effort and only added after
> changing the laws of physics. filePro has some shortcomings,
> but it does what it was designed to do quite well. The people
> who work for fP Tech work harder than anyone else I know to
> pull minor miracles out of their asses on a regular basis,
> so to bad-mouth them like you have is just wrong. You owe them
> an apology and one to the mailing list for wasting their time
> reading your uninformed "opinions", then shut up and sit down.
> No one wants to hear what you have to say.


<shrug> I already acceded when you said that it was too technically
difficult to adopt ODBC into filePro, so I don't think I owe anyone an
apology.  I thought that was already settled, actually.  And it's nice of
you to be the final arbitrator of what everyone does and doesn't want to
hear, apparently based on whether you take it as a personal attack.

fpTech can pull all the miracles out of their asses all they like.  It
doesn't change that what filePro was designed to do doesn't address my
needs, doesn't comply with modern practices, and is difficult to integrate.
I feel no guilt in saying so, and no guilt for voicing my earlier opinions,
especially since I qualified my opinion when giving it originally and took
your expert word for it that the reason ODBC wasn't a feature was because it
was too technically difficult.

Tyler
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