[KLUG Members] MySQL adoption

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 16:41:33 -0500, bill <bill@billtron.com> wrote:

>> And in hindsight, I'm not certain never starting is such a terrible thing.
>An argument based on your convenience.
Oh, plu-leeeze... let's write no code before it's time. 

>BTW, Tim Berners-Lee is on the phone and wants to talk to you.
Pick it up, Bill! Maybe you'll talk him out of being dult deliberate in
formulating his ideas, so that it emerges TODAY instead of next week, 
and is half-baked from the start.

>I'd mention someone who never started but I don't know any of them.
But I know people who didn't start writing code as soon as an idea
popped into their heads, and came up with far better designs (and way
more robust code) as a result.

>> If I (or anyone else) is going to inherit it and have to support it.
>Nowhere do you account for the possibility that anybody ever benefited 
>from it.  The chief benefit of these systems is for the user, not the 
>admin.  That's also where the long-term benefit lies.
The benefit MUST lie with the users, for they will not fund it otherwise.
The problem is that users often do not understand the consequences of their
choices. What they see is todays' cost/benefit, not the long term effect.
They would do far better to see both, wiegh both, even if the resulting 
descision is the same.

What I've seen all too often is that users are very selective in what they
want to see, or believe, or even worse, remember, at various times during the
lifecycle of a project. It is most amusing (and perhaps most harmful) when
the selective receptivity at an early stage contradicts the selective memory
later on...

>> True, but I think the methaphor has problems.  Expectation of exponential 
>> increases in complexity should be the assumption,  everything will be 
>> easier later, even if harder at first.  In most organizations the cost of 
>> building, scrapping, and rebuilding is just way too high; maybe because 
>> the cost of limping along on an existing base isn't properly perceived, 
>> but the "why" politically doesn't matter.

>Nevertheless, the "limpers" -did- something and if it's being used, 
>someone is still benefiting from it.  No business keeps using useless 
>programming simply to have something for the Smithsonian.
Often true, but this often leaves reality and enters the world of pure
perception. It's easy to keep pretending hidden costs really don't exist
at all.

>It's only because people use it now that anybody complains that it can't
>grow even more.  Three cheers and a cold brew for the limpers!  May their
>tribe increase.
Drink hearty, oh limpers! (having been in exactly thijs role), for your 
reign is fragile, and your fall often complete. When someone comes along
with a newer, or different, or more presentable technology, the limpers
(and their technologies) are often the first to be trampled.

>>>There is something valuable about contributing your effort to a larger 
>>>whole, leaving something behind you after you've moved on.  Those who do 
>>>not build leave nothing behind.  The principal ties in rather with the 
>>>whole open source movement, I believe.  The more people contributing 
>>>generally by trying new things specifically the better.

>Making it too difficult to start can be counterproductive.  
Making it too easy to start has its own pitfalls, too.
Like....
>The Conestoga skeletons littering the pioneer path west left many stories 
>but were largely made by those who tried to take too much equipment.
Perhaps, surely the result of poor plannning, not listening to the scouts,
and in haste, being sold a bill of goods. Better design and less haste up
front would have avoided this.

>> Right, but those who build nothing reusable also leave nothing behind.
>Well, that's not true on its face.  They at least left something 
>unusable -now-, and it was possibly useable -then-.  Maybe the telegraph 
>system is unusable, but it paved the way for the telephone.  By such 
>logic no one should have made a footpath through the wilderness to Santa 
>Monica because today it is paved and called Wilshire Boulevard.

I think the telegraph was a nessesary step to the telephone and byond. What 
I beleive causes friction is when, given that all the follow-on tevhnologies
already exist, some people insist on using the telegraph anyway, and argue
that it's faster and more effective. It might be slower to put down a good
fiber-optics trench, but it'll scale way better.

No one's critical of the folks who put in telegraphs when they were bleeding
edge, but now it is often uneconomical to put in telegraph wire when we know
there's a good chance that we're going to need fiber soon...

>If you build it, they may or may not come.  But if they keep coming, 
>someone will find a way to make it better: 
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over! :)
This works well in prototyping, in R&D, and where risks are high and forecas-
ting about the future is can't be done with a lot of confidence. It is not a
scenario for good, scalable engineering; that may come later.

>...that's what admins do; all 
>the while bellyaching about the sad banana job done by their 
>predecessors.  :-)
OH, you expect GRATITUDE? What planet are YOU from?!? :)

							Regards,
							---> RGB <---