Re: PostgreSQL 8.0 Feature List?

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 15:47:41 -0400 Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote:

> Oops! rwelty@averillpark.net (Richard Welty) was seen spray-painting on a wall:
> > "Does Not Taunt The Garbage Collector."

> That is the nicest way I have ever seen of characterizing abuses of
> system features.

i was just wondering how many people would remember "Do Not
Taunt Happy Fun Ball".

> In Java, GC is something people are prone to "Taunt."

yes, intentionally or otherwise.

> In C, there's something surrounding malloc() that often gets
> "taunted;" I'm not certain how to characterize it.

> In Lisp, the other two things that get "taunted" by bad programmers
> are:
>  a) Recursion (when they think that's the only way to go) and
>  b) Doing way too much list manipulation using c[ad]+r.

as a rule of thumb, in GC situations, if you have a choice between
creating one large object or numerous small ones, one large object
will be more efficiently collected and reused. this is why in lisp,
rather than consing up a list, if you can reasonably use an array,
that's what you should do. the principle applies in general to any
programming environment.

> There's a tendancy for these misuses to lead to code being less
> readable, to boot...

there is a wacky subculture in programming of folks who think
that obscure code is somehow "better".

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@averillpark.net
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
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