petit_robert

I switched several years ago and never looked backed. No problem whatsoever, I produce all my corporate documents with it.

Could you explain what it is that scared you so much? I am the one to scream whenever I'm forced into using anything from the post 2003 MS office suites, which is thankfully extremely rare.

[I just realized that my comment may have appeared very harsh, specially from the authors' point of view. My apologies to them, I was _very happy_ to have a good GUI when I started working with databases]

@antihero : Seeing things does help, but in my experience, using scripts and the command line is faster for developpement, because a lot of code can be reused, which is not the case with clicks.

I was being too restrictive though, a lot can be done with a GUI, of course.

Indeed. I really have no idea why so much energy is spent on GUI tools.

What do these things provide that one can't get from the command line, I wonder?

I've been happy using tuffmail.com .

Fine for my needs, no problems that I know of, and they're helpful

"How do you stop any market from getting taken over by psychopaths who want to turn it into an incest-fest?"

I suggest replacing these useless leeches with open source software.

I believe that most administrative tasks in large organizations are by now routine. For instance, there is absolutely zero invention in the insurance case processing industry : get claimee's documents, validate them and check contract's term. The only thing managers do is add useless overhead that justifies their presence and aimlessly complexify software that could be written once for the next 50 years at least.

With good open-source case management software, any organization can use it readily; no need for clueless suits to come in and pretend they analyze it because they can't; no need for them to demand costly and dangerous changes without any justification (other than the inept rules they created in the first place).

There is no need for the bums any more : just use free software that will readily organize your service.

I also pick my own hours for work, and for the last few years have woken up after 4-5 hours of sleep, worked for a couple hours, then gone back to sleep for another few hours, very much like in the monastery schedules mentionned upthread (and getting a lot of good work done, I might add).

Will a sufficient amount anecdotal evidence turn into proof?

In any case, I was getting worried that too much coding had destroyed my health, it turns out I am may have gone back to sanity instead; the article certainly made my day.

Colonel O. North, nice to see you again!

Considering the space requirements of a DB with a properly designed schema, I have to wonder what on earth you can do that generates beyond a few terabytes of data, and how you can make any sense out of it.

Also, your comment is rather ambiguous, I certainly hope you're not calling Postgresql experimental, because that would be laughable; and there are several examples of multi-terabyte databases using it.