Re: Update processor

Peter, I don't give a hoot about UP but fer gosh sakes if you're going
to complain about something at least have your facts straight and come
up with arguments that make sense.

"Peter McMurray" wrote:
The second is a disastrous product that tries to be everything and came out
with Open Architecture.

Contrary to my personal inclination many people insist on extended
development tools to come from the DBMS vendors - well, you got UP:
- it was free,
- it makes full use of dicts and bridges and translates and other
things that Pick people find elegant,
- it was never discontinued (though it was on the chopping block for a
while)
- and competitors at that time had... ?


It was and is extremely unpopular for several reasons.

(I hate to nitpick but Peter presents a stream of incongruous
statements here and I'll comment on each. His statement that UP is
unpopular is not debated but his reasoning is really off.)


Firstly it was only available on new installs so the sites installed over
the previous 15 years did not have it. A great help for maintenance, not.

And the next time someone insists on you back-porting a new feature
into their old software release you're going to say... ?


Secondly it had an awful, badly documented setup totally out of kilter with
the other products of the day.

Like Word Perfect or JET? Have you ever used JET or the "vi" editor?
Guess what, the key sequences for UP are similar. Badly documented?
How much documentation is needed for ctrl-d goes back and ctrl-f goes
forward?


Thirdly it is used for D3 Ref and as a result it is almost impossible to
find the info.

Ever try a Search? Ever try other help options provided by MV DBMS
vendors?


In fact D3 ref had excellent articles by Mark and others
that simply never saw the light of day.

The articles are in there if you look for them. Inability to find
them is an organization and indexing issue, not related to the tool.
Separate the tool from the application.


TG was one of the people that Dick insisted used it in the office and
therefore learned to love it through coercion.

That's another imagined factoid. I joined the company a year after
Dick was gone. You'll have to think of someone else to blame for my
mindless adoption of ill-conceived tools.

BTW, even if that was true, why is that a reason why the tool is
supposed to be bad? Your sense of cause and effect is frequently
flawed.


It has survived against enormous internal opposition because they have used
it to write their internal packages.

Enormous eh? Who was forcing anyone to use UP after Dick died?
Granted, not everyone over there that I know has been enamored with
UP, but I wouldn't say there has been enormous internal opposition.

I don't suppose you've ever used software written in UP but once you
have it's not as bad as one might think. You can save and exit
screens quickly, cruise through related records, and find things
quickly if they're indexed. The next time you're sitting in the
middle of a character screen and find yourself hitting Enter to get to
the bottom just so that you can get out, think about a better way. Do
you use characters like asterisk or backslash to exit? And that's
different from ctrl-x in what way?


Another major mistake as they never use Pick the way it is used in the
real world and therefore do not have the same issues.

It's sort of funny to see a guy in NZ talk about how a company in USA
"never" uses their own software. OK, think what you want. While
you're at it, think about all of the code and files behind those
screens that look just like anyone else's. No, they get a lot of
milage out of the environment - much more than most sites. They truly
eat their own dog food over there.

If you look at it conversely, I'm sure there would be mass complaints
if they encouraged people to use UP and they were Not using it
internally. The response then might be "great, no one is using it, so
get rid of it!" Well, that would just be more ammunition for people
to rag about them adding features and then taking them away. It seems
no matter what they do they will be a target for those inclined to
complain.


Some of the ideas such as zooming and cruising, remember it is supposed to
be a development environment not just an editor, are good but disastrously
implemented,

Your better idea is...?


and of course they are platform specific.

Yes, of course it's a very bad idea to add anything to your product if
it doesn't already exist somewhere else. ;)


I can well imagine that Dick needed a floor throttle to make it work,

No, didn't need it but like a little kid he got a kick out of it, like
a lot of his toys. We can agree that his alternative to the mouse was
a bad idea, but who knew? Failure is obvious in hindsight and success
can come out of nowhere: just look at Twitter and iFart.


this is of course just one of the reasons that it is useless in the field.

But UP doesn't require a pedal so that's not a reason.
And "useless in the field" is a misnomer. If people like you weren't
complaining so much about how they don't use UP, people like me who do
use it would be quite comfortable enjoying its use on a daily basis.


Dick hated the mouse and boasted of throwing it away after a couple of hours
using the new Apple that someone gave him for Xmas possibly as a big hint.
Peter McMurray

And from that you conclude that this is why UP is bad?
How do you code with the sort of logic that you use here daily?

Here's why UP has been unsuccessful:

1) It requires people to learn something new when they're really more
focused on just trying to write code. That creates an instant wall
against it as a hindrance to productivity rather than an aid. The
solution to this of course is the same as with any tool - learn it
when you don't need to, so that when you need it you know how to use
it.

2) A lot of functions requires memorization of a lot of different
keystrokes. None of Peter's statements have anything to do with
actually using the feature. This one is probably the key factor for
lack of adoption. You picture yourself trying to remember which keys
to press for this or that, get confused, say screw it, and you go back
to ED because you remember FI, EX, R, L, and an occasional "F". Isn't
this what it all boils down to?

3) The footpedal thing became a joke and I think that stayed with the
software feature throughout its existence. People have a hard time
getting comfortable with something when they associate it with
something stupid. There's a public stygma, and (who cares whether it
helps with development or not) people don't want to be laughed at in
public for using something associated with a foot pedal. So UP is
unpopular because it's unpopular - it happens with a lot of things.

Well, it's a good thing most people don't know where commands like
sed, awk, grep, and others came from, and that jBASE people don't
think of StarWars every time they use jEDI.

Seriously, I don't think most people hate UP because Dick got a kick
out of a foot pedal. People like or don't like something because
they've tried it and find it tough - or in many cases they simply
haven't tried it for longer that 2 minutes.

And while too many keys might be a cited problem, sorry guys, but many
successful products use ctrl- alt- shift- and every function key and
numpad key available in order to facilitate their usage. There are
macro tools (I use some) that allow us to make use of every possible
keystroke to perform a variety of system control functions way beyond
data entry. People just learn the keystrokes, and a lot of people
actually like it. The number of commands in UP is minuscule compared
to other products, and as I said earlier, it's easy to map the keys
with a terminal emulator, and I've even published maps. But people
would rather gripe for years on an easy target and pretend that it's
impossible to use arrows and other keys.

Let's face it, a lot of Pick people are stuck in their ways and if it
ain't ED then it's a target for curmudgeonly grumblings. Rather than
trying to make up some story about how people at another company are
using their own software, how about just admitting that people who use
this software are resistant to change, which is why poor Martin has to
make QM look just like D3 before most people will migrate to his fine
software. And again, it's sad and funny that UP is still considered
an abomination but I haven't seen a single comment about QM SED which
is virtually identical. Why? Because it's popular to gripe about UP
but politically incorrect to say anything wrong about the beloved QM.
I don't have a problem with QM and I'm not particularly fond of UP -
but what I really do dislike is hypocrisy.

T
.

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