Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!think!ames!lll-tis!daitc!jkrueger
From: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Informix problem with escape sequences
Message-ID: <187@daitc.daitc.mil>
Date: 26 Sep 88 21:52:51 GMT
References: <483@pan.UUCP> <860@vsi.UUCP> <806@ontenv.UUCP>
Reply-To: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil.UUCP (Jonathan Krueger)
Organization: Defense Applied Information Technology Center, Alexandria VA
Lines: 35

In article <806@ontenv.UUCP> soley@ontenv.UUCP (Norman S. Soley) writes:
>"it's a poor workman who blames his tools"

I prefer "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
Yes, it's silly to blame your hammer if you don't know how to use it.
But it's even sillier to blame a hammer for doing a poor job of
tightening screws; the solution is not to learn how to use the hammer
better, it's to get a screwdriver.  At the same time there are better
and worse hammers, and better and worse hammering skills.  But the
difference between the best and worst hammer, or the best and worst
hammerer, is small compared to the difference between turning screws
and trying to hammer them, or hitting at nails with a screwdriver. (*)

In the database world, we look to vendor products to provide tools for
two distinct sets of tasks: controlling the data, and building the
user interface.  The relational model has helped formalize and
standardize the first set, but says nothing about the second.  Most
vendors provide adequate toolchests for the first; quality of vendor
tools for the second varies widely.  At this point I have a theory
that vendors who most cleanly separate the two, and who specify how
each relates to the other as simply as possible, are most likely to
provide good quality tools for both.

-- Jon

(*) Although your shop teacher's practice that you weren't going to
get to use power tools until he was satisfied with your use of hand
tools applies here.  When I hear about "power users" I wonder how many
of them are any safer with bandwidths than they would be with band
saws...

-- 
Jonathan Krueger  uunet!daitc!jkrueger  jkrueger@daitc.arpa  (703) 998-4777

Inspected by: No. 15