When I can find time on Sunday I will be upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. It should be a fairly straight-forward and relatively quick process, but nothing is certain.
Update: Still not done, as I have to make some changes to the comments program in the new version, to make it work the way I want. It is cold, and I can’t type with mittens on.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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10 comments
I suppose making some snide comment about how you use to bust my chops when I would say the exact same thing when updating Movable Type would be out of line.
.-= last blog ..Rule Of Law, =-.
Go for it, Rook, but I haven’t lost anything yet, so, there’s always the first time.
Actually, I’m waiting for the update that screws up the minor tweaks that I have made to commenting, and makes me hack code again. That’s coming, because coders just can’t leave things alone.
Oh, sure. Get all nit picky about it. And I always lost my post, not the update. Machines never make mistakes, just the operator.
.-= last blog ..Rule Of Law, =-.
Actually, coders are programmers, not users. Coders are supposed to be writing things that users can’t screw-up so bad that they lose data.
Machines can only do what the coders tell them to do, unless they die from old age, heat, or the “Pepsi syndrome” [a liquid spilled into the works].
After you loaded the new code, you were out of the loop. If something went wrong it is the fault of whoever wrote the new code. Normally it is a result of not telling the user about some essential step that they need to take.
Users are assumed to do weird things, so coders are supposed to prevent those things from becoming disastrous.
When I was managing support for a large company in the early 90’s, I heard a bunch of my tech’s grumbling over lunch about *stupid users who always screw stuff up*. I suggested they be very careful about being overheard saying things like that, no matter how true or deserved the comments may be. You never know who may be listening! They asked how they could put it so it wouldn’t sound as harsh, and I said they should use the phrase ‘The problem is between the chair and the keyboard’. And they all smiled and chuckled. it became a well used comment over the years. 😉
And the problem is, as the old engineering axiom goes “When you design something to make it idiot-proof, the World creates a better idiot!” 😆
I don’t disagree, but an upgrade should be bulletproof. If you need a new data structure, you copy from the old structure, you don’t destroy it. The first thing you should do is test to be sure the old structure isn’t corrupted before you do anything else, and if it is you abort, and tell the user about the problem.
The worse thing you can do is shut off the user from their data, and by checking first, you don’t get blamed for an earlier problem. No matter how large the warning is about backing up data, we both know that chances are good that they didn’t do it.
I’ll never forget walking into a client’s office during the early days when floppies were the order of the day, and seeing a floppy on a document stand, held in place by a bar magnet. I kind of knew why I had been called.
LOL Don’t worry… I share your pain regarding *state-of-the-art* software design these days! Most of it would be akin to an average child’s early attempts at finger painting compared to a well known landscape artist. Ie, you wouldn’t find the finger painting hanging in a major gallery!
The honest fact is that today, most s/w *designers* (I use that very loosely) really have no idea! There are so many *automation* tools now, that most are just plain lazy and let the tools try to do all the work for them. There is very little planning, very little real design, and almost zero actual coding.
GIGO!
The biggest problem with the tools people use is the assumption that they are thoroughly debugged and will actually accomplish what is claimed. What good is OOP if the Objects have errors? I’ve used several of them and most don’t even think to type-check. If the object requires numeric input, there should be an error generated when it is passed alpha characters, not simply garbage results. They also seem to ignore cleaning up after themselves and releases resources when they are no longer needed. You watch the memory usage on some of these beasts, and it never declimes, it just goes up until you kill them. Hell, some of them require rebooting to free resources.
The standards are so lax these days, the open source seems to have much higher standards than anything you pay money for. It’s pathetic.
OT: Cyclone Laurence appears to be a zombie storm – it just won’t die. I really feel for those poor people around Kimberly, because I’ve been there and it is miserable.
I was trained *old-skool*! Design and write the test-cases first, then the code in small modules and test, test, and test again as you go! Of course, that too time consuming and the buying public are as dumb as fleas and will be perfect alpha (or even pre-alpha) testers, and they are so stupid, they pay for the privilege of being guinea pigs! So, rather than a 1 year design cycle, they can just rush crap out in a month or two, release weekly *updates*, and when the public stop’s buying it, they will rush out the *next greatest thing*!
OT: Cyclone Laurence appears to be a zombie storm – it just won’t die. I really feel for those poor people around Kimberly, because I’ve been there and it is miserable.
Yeah… I know some people up that way (near Port Headland), last I heard (early yesterday), it wasn’t good. They were moving inland, but resources are scarce and the wind and rain are pretty bad. It was upgraded to a Cat 5. My friends said they expect to loose most of their livestock and many animals in the area hit probably won’t survive.
I hope everyone does the smart thing, and is safe.
OT: There wasn’t time to re-stock after the last pass, nor to clear the debris, so the stuff that is down will become projectiles in the new pass.
The critters just don’t know where safety might be, and too many farm/ranch animals head for shelters that will probably collapse.
El Niño really screws up your weather.