Re: RE: Not knowing

["Michael Naughton" <mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Um, how many people on this list use subfiles (raise your hands, please)?

Okay -- keep your hand up if you completely understand every keyword and
record format in every subfile you've used in a program and can explain
why they are as they are and not some other way.

Okay -- you six can put your hands down now. :-)

I fully agree that we "should" understand as much as we can about what
we're doing, and we all "should" keep learning to expand and improve that
understanding. But I think most of us use a lot of things in our programs
(from subfiles to BIFs to embedded SQL) that we understand just well
enough to know that they're going to do what we need them to do, without
"precisely" knowing everything that they are doing.

IMHO, if it were required that no programmer ever use anything they they
don't completely understand, there would be a lot fewer programmers and a
lot fewer programs. They might well be much better programmers and
programs, but on the whole I think a case can be made that the world in
general has benefitted from the fact that so many people can now use
computers for so many things -- in large part because of programmers who
knew just enough to get by (and the ones that don't know quite enough
provide extra employment for the rest of us ;-). And I think it's the same
way in just about every human activity, not just computer programming.

Just my $.02 . . .

midrange-l@midrange.com writes:
> We should
>| do things because we know precisely why and how,
>| and not because we believe or somebody said
>| "try this, it might work".


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@juddwire.com