[Koha-devel] Koha PEOPLE Efficiency [WAS: RFC: Koha : Merge biblio & biblioitems tables]

[Rick Welykochy]

Ryan Higgins wrote:

> So is the performance difference negligible in keeping two tables ?

Who really cares about machine performance these days.
CPU, memory and storage can be doubled at the drop of a hat.

Why are we planning to put in an ORM? Not to speed up the code. To
increase people efficiency.


<RANT>

I am *VERY* concerned about people performance. To wit:

(*) the number of bugs being uncovered in Koha increases
     monotonically day by day; they are not being fixed
     fast enough

(*) it is very difficult to maintain and fix bugs in some of the
     areas of the Koha software; this results in a people inefficiency,
     i.e. it can take hours to find one little shard of error in the
     messy Perl 4.0 coding we have to live with

(*) the "organic" way that Koha has grown in leaps and bounds over
     the years with no overall analysis and design has meant that once
     again people (i.e. developer) efficiency suffers

(*) the lack of peer review of existing code in Koha; there are many
     nasty and out-dated coding styles lurking therein if you care to look;

(*) the lack of audit of database access; i.e. when I walk through the
     code, sometimes I can see that the same bits of data are loaded
     multiple times form the database, or worse, ten rounds trips are
     used to the database when one would do (piggy backing)

(*) software developers start to shy away and eventually shun bady
     designed and written systems since it becomes a nightmare to
     care for them and keep them up and running reliably.

If you don't know what I am talking about, perhaps a new Wiki page
is required to explain people vs machine efficiency.

Those who have been around the block a few times will read the above as
the same old repetitive litany of many software projects that need care
and a helping hand.

It is very easy for geeks to comment on how slow this piece of Perl code is
or how inefficient that line of SQL is, but rarely do we address the
real solid underlying issues which involve managing people within the project
and helping them to work efficiently.

Let's get some perspective on Koha development: the problems that Koha
suffer ain't gonna go away if we improve the efficiency of the code
and the data model.

They will only be addressed and resolved if we manage the people resources
we have available to fix things. And especially only if it becomes easier
to understand the Koha code base and more efficient to manage and change it.

</RANT>



cheers
rickw


-- 
_________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

Tis the dream of each programmer before his life is done,
To write three lines of APL and make the damn thing run.