RE: Software Vendors

Hi Booth -

>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 17:08:26 -0500
>From: "Martin, Booth" <BoothM@goddard.edu>
>Subject: RE: Software Vendors
>
>This discussion interests me especially since I started doing some
>client/server event driven programming.  "Bugs" means something different
to
>me now than it did on green screen and I am a lot more tolerant of the
>concept itself.  

Yes, it is true that event-driven programming is trickier because of the
timing issues and interactions with other processes.  Whether it is
client-server or not is not a major consideration.  But that is still no
excuse for shoddy programming.  OS/400 has a lot of event-driven coding but
you don't seeing blowing up every five minutes.

>On the green screen it tends to work or not work  -  fairly simple to be
>"zero-defect", but in the world of GUI and client/server that whole
paradigm
>disappears.  Instead there's all sorts of choices, shared DLL's, and all
>sorts of chains of events and unexpected consequences.  In other words,
>Green screen errors <> gui bugs. 

You're mixing apples and oranges here.  GUI has nothing to do with whether a
process is procedural or event-driven, nor does the use of shared DLLs.

I haven't done any event-driven programming for a number of years, but I
have in the past; in particular a repeater controller for an Amateur Radio
repeater.  It was event-driven, but it was not GUI, nor did I use any DLLs.
Since it was written in a procedural language, I had to write the whole
event processing underlying code.  Was that an excuse to have bugs?  Not in
this lifetime!!!  The hardware was unreliable since the interface boards
were homemade and since I was using the base system in ways that it was not
meant to be used (for example, I sent data OUT one of the joystick ports);
but the code was solid.

Ken
Southern Wine and Spirits of Nevada, Inc.
Opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer or anyone else.

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