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Cameron Laird wrote:
> Well *that* certainly made my morning unpleasant.
Then let's see if I can spoil you afternoon, too ...
I was working on a project (that used Excel, alas) that checked the daily allocation of oil and gas. The calculations were very complicated, and liable to error. I thought it would be a good idea if I serialised intermediate calculations so they could be checked. My solution was to save them as a CSV file, with array name in the first column, index variables in subsequent columns, and array value in the last column. That way, they could be checked manually. The standard approach at my company would have been to create honking big spreadsheets to house these values.
Anyway, time went on, it was decided that these daily calculations needed to be aggregated to monthly values. Well, it turned out that the solution I had adopted was quite good, because one could just suck the file in, read off the relevant variables, and populate an array. To be compared with what would normally happen of creating a nexus of links to a disk-busting collection of spreadsheets.
I shall have my revenge, though. The file serve hierarchy that we have is very complicated, and is due for simplification in the very near future. So all those peeps who did spreadsheets, with hard links to other spreadsheets, are in for a bit of a surprise. I think the I-Ching expressed it better than I ever could:
The bird's nest burns up.
The wanderer laughs at first,
Then must needs lament and weep.
Through carelessness he loses his cow.
Misfortune.
Source: http://www.eclecticenergies.com/iching/hexagram.php?nr=56
I'm thinking that the I-Ching is a vast untapped resource for programming wisdom, plus it makes it funny. Or haikus, maybe they'd be good.
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