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

I liked that reply.  :)  May I add to it?  

Using your story, lets focus on what is effective, not what is efficient. 
You have a distressed person out there, quite possibly in danger.  When that
bell rings the machine better go into "lets take care of this person fast"
mode.  That is the only issue.  Response time becomes paramount.  Forget
efficiency, cut through the clutter, get responses fast, whatever the cost
in efficiency.  If you have to kick off the bill collectors, kick em off,
and don't even  stop to apologize.  But give them response time.  Thats
effective but certainly not efficient..

. 
 
---------------------------------
Booth Martin
http://www.martinvt.com
---------------------------------
-------Original Message-------
 
From: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Date: 08/15/05 10:07:12
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: 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/
___________________________________________________________________________
Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. -
Sir Winston Churchill
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