RE: Service Programs VS normal Programs (Jon Paris)

["Dan Bale" <dbale@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx / Jon Paris
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 9:03 PM
>
> Personally I think that there is a lot of benefit to "playing" (and I know
> you do this Joe).  As adults we seem to forget that all of the really
> important things in our lives we learnt while playing as children.  We
> learnt to walk by falling over - think about it - walking is just a series
> of controlled falls!  Why does "play" become an evil because we
> are adults?
> If we use the latest and greatest - even if there is no immediate
> quantifiable ROI - don't we get an ROI later when faced with new
> programming challenges?

Very well put, Jon.  I've never thought of play as "evil", but as just
another item in my daily life that I need to balance with work, family,
church, home maintenance, boy scouts, bowling, little league baseball,
soccer.  What did I miss?

Personally, I find it difficult to spend less than sufficient time to grasp
basic concepts, because otherwise that effort, for me, usually goes to
waste.  (I still need at least 4 hours of sleep every night.)  My personal
discovery of more advanced SQL within these past few weeks is a good
example.  I spent probably 20+ hours of personal time "playing" with it to
get a functional understanding of joins and unions, plus a little bit of UDF
that I still need to "play" with.  (It was a bear getting past some of the
syntax.)  Fortunately, I have been able to utilize this new knowledge at
work, the benefits of which will bear fruit during tonight's month-end
processing.

db