Sorting an array

[Fairlight]

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 12:30:08PM -0400, Jose Lerebours via Filepro-list thus spoke:
> You need "system" or "user" command to invoke any shell script just
> the same.  As per RAM, lol ...

But if your shell script uses only internals, it stops there at the first
bash script.  If you load a 7.3MB php binary -every single invocation-,
even with shared memory in the VMM knocking that down to 218MB per image,
it adds up.  See my other email.

RAM is a finite resource.  You may think it's a non-factor based on a
single-server solution.  Take a cluster of 90+ machines all fighting for
RAM on the same set of compute nodes, and it becomes extremely prudent to
not waste RAM.  You hit a point where you cannot allocate more physical RAM
because the hardware doesn't support adding more.  New compute nodes are
not a trivial expense.

I think the difference is that I'm talking about coding for an
enterprise-scale solution, and you're (apparently, I can only pray) talking
about coding for a hobbyist or small-business solution.  Those are two
different worlds.  The difference is that enterprise-grade software should
scale downwards, while hobbyist and small-business stuff will not
necessarily scale upwards.

I also learned programming in an era when programmers actually learned
the systems-level impact of their code.  They had to.  Most programmers
these days don't know the underlying systems for which they write, which is
honestly a travesty.

Commoditisation of programmers was a -bad- idea.  The results have
convinced me that all these "Everyone Can Learn To Code" initiatives
are a Very Bad Idea[tm] which bode ill for the industry, if they're not
taught systems as well.  Yes, it's an elitist view, but there are very
good reasons why it -should- be treated with some modicum of elitism Ä or
there should at least be some assurance that people are properly taught the
foundations upon which they'll be riding.

I had it good.  I had excellent mentors.  One of them may have had
the ethics of a garden slug, but even he drilled incredibly important
foundational skills into me.  You know, -useful- things, like, "Never,
never, NEVER assume what your environment will be in a non-terminal
scenario."  If I had a dime for every time I've seen someone assume PATH or
TERM will be set or set correctly under Apache, Sendmail, cron, etc...

mark->