Moving in

This is my first entry here. I've just moved from http://idontwasteink.spaces.live.com/blog/ with all my entries.

Best class' description of all time

ConfigurationErrorsException class (.Net Framework) is described precisely this way: "The current value is not one of the EnableSessionState values". Very informative, to say the least. I think it's worth noting that this class is also not a Godzilla and not a Popsicle. Of course, we all make mistakes (I personally make dozens of them every day, and if it wasn't for TDD...), I'm just trying to stress the same old point: do not cipher your code, it's hard enough to read as it is. And misleading class' description can be nasty (although it's way worse to cipher names of classes).

Would not it be nice

T-SQL and the likes have disappointed me years ago. I'm not sure though what hurts readability more -- the wildcard star in "SELECT * FROM ...", or the tragically misplaced "WHERE" statement (e.g. "SELECT FirstName FROM ... WHERE..."). [Instead it could have been: "RETRIEVE DATA FROM MyTable INCLUDING/EXCLUDING (...set of filters goes here...)" -- I didn't give a lot of thought to this imaginary query, therefore, the language used may not be sufficient for defining any query on the planet, but, in my opinion, it's much easier to read and understand than the modern SQL counterparts].


"I'm used to reading/writing SQL statements the way they are being defined now, -- you might argue, -- And those statements make perfect sense to me!" Of course, it makes sense, but it's just another cipher you had spent some time breaking, memorized the ciphering/deciphering algorithm and voila: you understand SQL queries. Would not it be nice, if there were fewer ciphers (there are thousands in IT) to break and memorize? That would boost IT-productivity and make our work less complicated.