On 2008-05-02, Aaron Seidman <aaron@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Duke Normandin wrote:
>
>> Now I see how easily "****d References" could quickly produce spaghetti
>> code. But why use them at all? Is there a _speed_ advantage? Something
>> else?
>
> MUMPS was first developed in the 1960s when storage space was extremely
> tight and ****d references reduced the amount of storage space needed.
There
> are a number of such "features" in M, some of which are fine and some of
> which (especially ****d references) ought to be avoided. One should be
very
> careful in designing the database itself so that one does not store
things
> unnecessarily, especially if on anticipates that it will become very
large.
> Source code, on the other hand, is usually a small fraction of the
total
> amount of data on disk. Today, storage is cheap and programmer time is
the
> expensive commodity, so one should focus on making code clear rather
than
> "clever."
I hear you! I started programming with the Perl languageabout 10 years
ago. It can has some cryptic and rather puzzling syntax, which oftentimes
harbor some narsty bugs. ;^)
--
Duke Normandin
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