Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Fri, 28 Feb 2025 07:55:08 -0500, c186282 wrote:

   I wrote an "unlimited sorting levels" function once for Revelation DB
   ... pretty compact ... and not long afterwards I could NOT figure out
   how it worked. It *did*
   work though. Sometimes ya just get 'in the zone' when writing code
   and maybe yer head can't get back there later on ?

One of the graybeards pointed out if you use every last bit of your
creativity writing the code you'll be utterly screwed trying to debug it.

   The 'configurable' stuff ... sometimes you get a sort of next-level
   idea that SOUNDS great, but by the time you really get into it then
   it WOULD be just easier to write one-off reports or whatever.

I was tasked with coming up with reporting software our clients could use
by themselves. I looked a Jasper, Crystal, and the others and concluded
you couldn't give any of them to a non-technical person with any hope of
success. The only one I thought might be usable was Power BI and that is
geared to graphics more than text reports.