Dumb Newbie Questions -- 3 of N

[Richmond Mathewson]

Just before I left Scotland for Bulgaria (2003ish) Klaus Major took
me to task for my distinctly in-elegant coding; and, frankly, it still
is fairly inelegant. But I'm the chap that wears second-hand clothes,
uses second-hand computers, and isn't that fussed about what people
think about him (although, oddly enough, I do care about my wife's
opinion) as long as I can achieve my aims.

If I were designing programs for an employer (rather than myself)
I would take great care about the nature of my code (a thing I have
done in the past, when I was not my own boss), in-code documentation
(so, when the number 10 bus squashed me flat my successor could
have half a chance at continuing my work) and would also wear a pressed
shirt, trousers and tie (instead of a tatty old kilt). I might, just 
possibly,
polish my shoes.  :)

This is fast becoming a 'world view' discussion, rather than one about
whether one can get away without custom properties forever (or, at
least as things stand just now).

"Elegance" is jolly nice, but "elegance" often involves more thought,
more time, and more money. Now, this Merry May Holiday (1 to 6 of May
here in Bulgaria - paid for by working several Saturdays later in the 
month),
while I have had a Merry May Influenza with a Merry May Temperature of
102 degs F I have 'belted out' a fair old number of "quick 'n' dirty"
standalones for LInux that will guide my log-suffering pupils through the
niceties of converting Direct into Reported Speech, Adverbs of Frequency
and Careers. Had I stopped to worry about 'elegance' I would have got
bogged down before I started. Feverish, I worked feverishly !!!!

I also spent considerable time working with GIMP to make sure that
the imagery in my teaching programs, as well as the general GUIs
was up the the standard I expect of myself: THIS IS WHAT THE END-USERS
SEE, not my tatty code!

I am a lucky man; no boss, my own children do the beta testing, and
as I use 'tatty, old PCs' speed of code execution is not of the essence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not dispute the elegance of custom properties, speedy code,
keeping things in one place (rather than a string of:

do fld "blob"
do fld "blab"
do fld "blub"

and so on, ad nauseam), but as I get paid for the time that I teach,
rather than the time I program, and I would much rather spend my
time in forny of the computer writing long, tendentious messages
like this . . .   :)   . . . and learning more about Runtime Revolution's
seemingly endless capabilities, I can't be bothered with elegant code.

sincerely, Richmond Matheswon.

DunbarX at aol.com wrote:
> This is all about the name, eh, not the elegant and compact functionality?
>
> I suppose one would make a field that contained the id's of the objects, a 
> space, perhaps, the startLoc, another space and the endLoc. One line per 
> object. You can then put and get all the data as needed. It is what I would do 
> in HC. There, i said it.
>
> But a customProp is SO much more elegant that I know this debate will be 
> over soon. In fact, as soon as some need or other arises in the development 
> process, which should be any minute now...
>
> Craig Newman
> In a message dated 5/3/09 1:22:46 PM, jacque at hyperactivesw.com writes:
>
>
>   
>> I'm curious now. If you wanted to create a moveable button scenario like
>> my example does, what method would you use to store their start
>> locations and move them back later?
>>
>>     
>
>
>
>
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