Many data entry systems allow one to omit needless punctuation. For
example, one can enter today as
20130215
or
130215
(using YMD order). Tell me how you would distinguish between the date and
an amount of $20,130,215 or $201,302.15. The digits -- what is entered --
are the same.
I do not create data entry controls that allow for ambiguous input. I
format and mask them so that doesn't happen.
I am not a professionally trained programmer, and I will bet you that the
people who created this software are. So much for professional training.
I take extreme exception to your swipe. Professional training is
not all that is required. The people using the system also have to care
about what they enter. If they enter garbage, there is no guarantee that
it can be caught. Some may well be, but some bad entries may look just
like valid data. How can you tell which is which?
It is a basic principle of programming that the system should be designed
to prevent as many data-entry errors as possible. Data-entry clerks are
often not very well paid or trained. Programmers who are both are supposed
to compensate for that. To claim otherwise is to misplace responsibility
for quality.
And this also argues in favor of database software (like VFP) that has
unique date data types that can't be confused with anything else.
I have news for you. VFP date types can be entered without having
to enter the punctuation. For example, today can be entered as
20130215
Huh? Try this:
CREATE TABLE foobar FREE (somedate D)
INSERT INTO foobar (somedate) VALUES (20130215)
You'll get a data type mismatch error.
It is easy to make mistakes. You did so yourself. Both of the URLs
that you provided are erroneous.
I copied and pasted that part of the email without checking the links. I
should have done that. But I exercise far more care when writing code that
handles money, or dates, or anything else, than I do when copying and
pasting into emails.
It is easy to make some mistakes while programming, but not others.
If you follow basic procedures for validating data, the kinds of procedures
that any entry-level programmer should know, you don't make the kind of
mistake described here.
This wasn't a complex or difficult task. It was an extremely simple, basic
task, and the people responsible for it failed to get it done correctly.
That's not "sometimes mistakes are unavoidable", that's incompetence.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
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