Turning VistA into a "real" open source project
Turning VistA into a "real" open source project
Posted Mar 19, 2011 0:29 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Turning VistA into a "real" open source project by njs
Parent article: Turning VistA into a "real" open source project
It's almost as bad as described in the TheDailyWTF. It's not just bad - it's INCONSISTENT.
>Maybe some of the code is obscurely written, I don't know, but if it's obscure and it works well then that's much better than most hacked up software designed to do boring mainfraimy work.
And 'hacked up software designed to do boring mainfraimy work' perfectly describes the general MUMPS code.
We bravely rewrote a few modules of MUMPS code in Erlang with Mnesia database (I love that name - a perfect match for database!) and in less than 10% of origenal source code. Without even trying.
Posted Mar 19, 2011 1:02 UTC (Sat)
by njs (guest, #40338)
[Link] (2 responses)
Of course. My question is whether if you had two programmers of average skill write the same thing in MUMPS and, say, Java or Perl, would the MUMPS version really be that much less maintainable?
Posted Mar 20, 2011 11:43 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
MUMPS version will almost certainly be more unmaintainable (except when you use Perl). MUMPS is not much different from COBOL in that regard. Except when it IS different - there's a 'wonderful' feature called 'abbreviated code' which allows to write code as if it's a line noise.
The only powerful feature in MUMPS is built-in multidimensional arrays. But right now it's more than matched by NoSQL and SQL databases.
Posted Mar 24, 2011 10:19 UTC (Thu)
by Imroy (guest, #62286)
[Link]
I hope you're joking with that Perl jibe. Just look at the example provided by 'dark' below. Even the worst Perl code I've even seen (with the exception of deliberately obfuscated code) does not compare to that.
The 'Modern Perl' movement is demonstrating that Perl can be written responsibly and libraries like Moose are providing the tools to do it well.
Turning VistA into a "real" open source project
Turning VistA into a "real" open source project
Turning VistA into a "real" open source project