I've been thinking about the way I program and how the methods I use affect the productivity in my department.  In many cases, the first solution I can come up with is the one that goes live and the amount of time it takes for the process to run is not a consideration.  The thought is, if it takes an extra click, or if it's easier to take a few extra seconds and switch screens a couple of times, then okay, let's do that.  It's still going to be faster and more accurate than someone manually making the keystrokes.  I tend not to consider if a program I'm writing is going to be used numerous times a day by numerous people in the department, or if the program is going to be used for a 5 line file or a 5000 line file.  It can all add up.

Then there's my current project.  We've determined that the download of a document off one server, converting the document from the current blob format, back into a 'real' file, and then uploading it to a new server, should on average take 4 seconds.  My coworker told me this, and I thought 'hell, that's pretty good'.  Then he reminded me that there are almost a half-million files that we are going to have to run through this process, and that, by his calculation, it will take >9 days of a computer working 24x7.  Doh.

As a lot of people in class are busy focused on learning the programming basics, I'm interested in fine-tuning the skills that I have.  How can I be an efficient programmer?  What are the advanced tools that I can take advantage of?  How can I build programs that are not only easy to use, but are also easy to update and maintain.

2/12/2008 4:07:59 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)    Comments [0] Trackback