RE: Efficiency vs effectiveness (WAS: Force EOF in a Subfile)

Just to interject my 2 cents here, but why can't a program be written both 
effectively and efficiently?  Does 2 seconds matter... that's one's 
personal choice, but let's just say you're doing a 911 system, and let's 
just say you're the person making the call to 911 and there's someone out 
front of your house threatening you, does 5 seconds matter???  How about 
30 seconds since 6 users are now taking calls and the program is not 
efficient?  Does efficiency matter then?  Pulling the phone number that's 
calling in to automatically get the dispatch out to the address associated 
with that number in milliseconds vs seconds does it matter?  All depends 
on your point of view then I guess.  Scenario, police are coming up to an 
intersection that could lead them to your place in a minute, but if they 
pass the intersection, it would take them 5 minutes.  Now, if they get the 
info just 10 seconds late, they've passed the intersection, but had they'd 
gotten the info just 5 seconds earlier, they'd be on the way already.  It 
may sound far fetched, but I don't think it really is.  Personally, I 
think that a 'good' programmer develops effective applications.  A 'great' 
programmer develops effective and efficient applications.  I'm not at the 
'great' stage yet, but I'd like to think I'm beyond the 'good' stage 
because I "try" to be efficient.  And as for the other programmer trying 
to maintain the application.  If s/he is not experienced enough, or 
capable enough to understand the new methods being used by me or someone 
else, then they shouldn't be doing what they are doing in the first place. 
 No offense to anyone on the list intended, but if you don't understand 
what's being done in a program, you should have the common sense to either 
ask the developer who wrote it, or ask a more experience coworker about 
it.  It's the types that go in blindly changing stuff they have no idea as 
to what they are changing that really tick me off.  I'd sooner have a 
coworker that asks a hundred questions and gets it right, then one that 
asks none and screws the whole thing up.

Just my 2 cents, stepping down now :)

Ron Power
Programmer
Information Services
City Of St. John's, NL
P.O. Box 908
St. John's, NL
A1C 5M2
709-576-8132
rpower@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.stjohns.ca/
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Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. - 
Sir Winston Churchill