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

[Chris Cormack]

Rick

<RANT>
What you say may be all well and good, but I have yet to see a single
patch from you.
Want some bugs fixed? How bout fixing a couple yourself, show us all
how its done eh?
</RANT>


On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 12:40 PM, Rick Welykochy <rick at praxis.com.au> wrote:
> 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.
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