Re: OT: OFF TOPIC: returning multiple result sets from a stored procedure

On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 01:40:56PM -0700, John Adams wrote:
> OT: 
> 
> OFF TOPIC:
> I honestly do not mean any offence, just out of curiosity. 
> If you guys care about money and time why would you spend the best
> years of your life basically copying commercial products for free?
> Because for a person with higher than average IQ far less than one
> percent of any program is creative and needs some thinking and the
> bulk of it is just a million stupid details. 

It's difficult to answer a question when there are so many different
wrong assumptions that underlie it.  I'll take pieces of the
questions, explicitly state the assumptions that underlie them, and
explain what I mean by "wrong."

"If you guys care about money"
   Here you're assuming that open source code development on large   projects like PostgreSQL is done in people's spare
time. In   reality, 80-95% of such development is done by people who are paid   by their workplace to do so.  In the
caseof PostgreSQL   developers, this pay is at least comfortable, so your assumption   that this is done uncompensated,
interms of money, is simply   wrong.
 
   For those who do development and are not directly compensated by   their employer for doing so, there are other
monetaryrewards,   such as being able to put such projects on résumés/CVs, which in   turn results in better job
prospects,consulting fees for   specialized knowledge, etc., etc.
 

"and time why would you spend the best years of your life"
   That time's compensated, in many different ways, as illustrated   above.  Perhaps your life is in such desperate
straitsthat you   can devote time to nothing but acquiring money.  If this is true,   I feel very sorry for you.  I
feeleven sorrier for you if you are   not in such desperate straits, but you are nevertheless devoting   every waking
hourto the pursuit of money.  It's a sad and lonely   way to waste your precious days of life.
 

"basically copying"
   In a technological sense, FLOSS often leads the way and "products"   catch up later if at all.  FLOSS technologies
arefrequently so   much better than their proprietary counterparts that they kill   existing markets (C compilers,
e.g.),and cause markets in other   technologies (dynamic languages, e.g.) never to form.
 

"commercial products for free?"
   There's a lot of confusion about this word.  "Commercial" means   "of or pertaining to commerce."  It has nothing to
dowith whether   the license is permissive like PostgreSQL's or extremely   restrictive as it is with, say the Windows
EULA. In future, if   you wish to contrast licenses, it's free vs. proprietary, and if   you wish to contrast usage,
it'shobby vs. commerce vs. science,   roughly speaking.
 

"Because for a person with higher than average IQ far less than one
percent of any program is creative and needs some thinking and the
bulk of it is just a million stupid details."
   The difference between imagining something and actually   accomplishing it is precisely those "million stupid
details."     The truly rewarding thing isn't dreaming up some wonderful dream.   That's easy.  The truly rewarding
thingis in bringing that dream   from a lonely and ethereal state to one that's shared and   concrete, where it can in
turnhelp spawn new dreams, which people   then realize and share, and on and on and on.
 

> I just don't follow/understand your thinking.  Maybe I am naïve.

You're that, clearly, along with being misinformed, young, and
arrogant.

Fortunately, all of these things but youth are fixable if you decide
to do the work to fix them, and by the time you've done that work,
your youth will also be waning ;)

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com
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