software design (was: Re: [geeks] perlish disgruntlement, java considered, sun hardware sought)

[Bill Bradford]

On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 09:22:33PM -0400, alex j avriette wrote:
> ayup. dont you wish you'd done this to begin with? orthogonal code 
> design means you'd have separate sections and prototypes:
> [ file handling ]
> [ host handling ]
> [ protocol handling ]
> [ html backdrop ]
> [ arguments for pulldown (s) ]
> sounds to me like a job for xml, perl, and shell. 

There wasnt *time* to do it this way, to begin with.

> any time you come up 
> with a quick fix for something like this you *own* it and it will only 
> hurt you (or your successor) later when you (they) have to go back into 
> it and change it for a different dataset/host/environment.

Quick fixes are fine if you go back and clean them up later, which is
what I'm in the process of doing.  This was never expected to be a
hardcore-production-environment process, and I've had more important
things to work on in the meantime.

"do it right the first time" is okay if you have enough TIME the first
time. 8-)

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford
mrbill at mrbill.net
Austin, TX