Coping with a Spreadsheet Database

A common way to save persistent, important data is a spreadsheet. It provides a handy, potentially normalized store that's readily accessible with minimal tooling. It has a UI usable by people with a spectrum of skills.

Sadly.

There's a core conflict:

  • The advantages of spreadsheets-as-database are numerous.
  • The disadvantage is …
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The Pipeline Question when Bashing the Bash

Background: https://medium.com/capital-one-developers/bashing-the-bash-replacing-shell-scripts-with-python-d8d201bc0989

And this

I wonder how/why python did not pick up some sort/form of pipe operator. 🤨 (although coroutine does have .send method 🤔)

—Ivan Pejić (@nadrimajstor) August 26, 2017

The answer to this is interesting because there are two kinds of parallelism. I like …

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On "Taste" in Software Design

Read this: http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html.

I was originally focused on "beauty". Clearly, good design is beautiful. Isn't that obvious? Why so many words to explain the obvious?

The post seemed useless. Why write it in the first place? Why share it? Why share it now, 12 years …

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Proverbs and Bumper-Sticker Computer Science



The Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF)

Okay. This is seriously cool.

The Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) provides a controlled vocabulary that should be used to seed a project's data model.

See http://www.udef.com/

See http://www.opengroup.org//udef/

We're looking at applying UDEF retroactively to an existing schema.

What a pain in …

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Making a bad problem worse

Imagine that you're a beer distributor who provides "just-in-time" beer by type. You don't take orders for a specific brand, you take orders a type: stout, lager, India pale ale, etc. You resolve the bill based on what you actually delivered.

This can be kind of complex. However, there's no …

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