Re: Link to bug webpage

On Tuesday 21 August 2001 11:06, Mitch Vincent wrote:
> Some people crack me up in their opinions.. If it took him 6 hours to
> figure out "int8" then I'm not really interested in anything else he has to
> say... Lord...

Hmmm...

Let's look at the guy's bulleted list.

The first item he can't stand is that you can't add a column after any 
arbitrary column, that it goes at the end.  Well, this is really clueless, as 
you order the columns when you SELECT or when the application presents the 
data.

The second item, however, has some real meat in it.  Don't tell me that I 
should have a correct design before writing any application code.  Any 
programmer knows that the user's needs change over time -- and the database 
should be able to keep up without any problems.  I have myself ran into 
PostgreSQL's ALTER-hostile environment.  I'm patient, however, as I need the 
featureset.  Our ALTER needs real muscle.  Some things are already on our 
TODO list to fix this, though -- and this guy should have checked that.  But 
maybe he didn't find our TODO list.  And 7.1 is much better than 7.0.3, the 
version he looked at.

That third item, about int8.  Can a clueless newbie who's heard that 
PostgreSQL is so great, knowing NOTHING about it, find things reasonably well 
in the docs? Only clueless newbies should answer that question -- I, nor any 
developer, qualify to answer that question.

The fourth item looks like whining, IMHO.  The problem he describes is merely 
annoying to him -- yet it's bulleted.  Sounds like a MySQL partisan who's 
upset that PostgreSQL is better at many things and is trying to justify not 
supporting PostgreSQL out of personal bias.  However, if it weren't too 
difficult to support index creation at table creation time, why NOT allow 
that?  Do we just not _want_ to do it?  I didn't see it in my read of TODO.  
Of course, the guy didn't ask on the lists to have it put in TODO.  But how 
would he know to ask to have something put in TODO?

Our development process is very simple, but is also rather opaque to 
outsiders.  Maybe that's a good thing; maybe that's bad.  Should we let just 
any user know that if they want a feature, they need to ask to have it placed 
on TODO?  Or are people really not reading the docs? (Experienced admins know 
the answer to THATquestion.....)

Our documentation is, however, much better now than when I started.  Kudos to 
Thomas and all the rest that have contributed.  I also like the direction 
techdocs.postgresql.org is going.

The last worthwhile item on this guy's list is changing ownership of a 
database.  Well, I haven't yet had to do this: can we do this easily?

Just because someone is clueless and even obnoxious in their comments doesn't 
automatically disqualify what they say from validity.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11