"Allen E. Elwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 10/07/2005 12:53:47 PM:
> The way I look at it, when I started programming 30 years ago systems were > millions of times slower, and in another 30 years they'll be so stinking > fast that coding for speed will go the way of the Suchomimus and the > Iguanodon! As long as programmers think that way, their employers will continue to pay people like me big bucks to come in and make the code more efficient. ;-) Sometimes more powerful systems can make bottlenecks more prominent. Today's systems are expected to process more data in a shorter time, and to provide more functionality than in days of yore, so even minor inefficiencies are encountered over and over again. IMHO, there will always be room for efficient coding techniques. Some folks claim you have to sacrifice maintainability and readability for the sake of efficiency - I've rarely found that to be true. As long as you care about and consider both performance and maintainability as you develop code, it all just falls together. Now, as to people who want to code one line instead of two (e.g.: the topic of this thread), I say take a touch typing course so you don't mind a few extra keystrokes. (I've always been amazed watching seasoned professionals using only one finger on each hand to write programs.) I would much rather inherit a program that does its own opens and reads instead of doing translates. Sooner or later somebody will want to get a second field from the record and you'll be faced with doing two translates or changing it to the way it should have been done in the first place. Plus, the OCONV with a translate isn't nearly as obvious to the casual observer of the code. Of course, you could put in some comments to make it clear, but those keystrokes could have been spent opening the file at the top of the program. Tim Snyder Consulting I/T Specialist , U2 Professional Services North American Lab Services DB2 Information Management, IBM Software Group 717-545-6403 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------- u2-users mailing list u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
