Re: how to increase field size without increasing the field size

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 8:41 AM, Steve Richter <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In defense of my colleague who is reluctant to recompile all, there is
code that is 15 years old in the system. That predates him. No one
knows for sure if the source code on the system is the actual source
that was compiled to create the program. Would be nice if source was
always stored in the program object.

I understand this situation very well, because we have objects here
that we either don't know for sure that the source matches, or even in
a few cases no source at all. So I'm not taking his predicament
lightly at all.

But listening to the schemes being bandied about to get around this, I
think it's better to bite the bullet now and just recompile. Most
likely, the source does correspond to the live executable; but even if
it doesn't, the added cost of fixing/testing the errant programs
(which I fully appreciate could be very high) is probably going to be
worth it in the medium to long term.

I'm guessing that the programmer actually would be glad to do the
work, as long as he has the full support of his higher-ups. (That is,
if his higher-ups can be made to understand and appreciate the value
of doing it right, and give him the proper latitude to do so.) I know,
this is also a luxury that not all programmers have.

John