On 31 October 2016 at 15:50, Christofer C. Bell <christofer.c.bell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think the OP's point is that having a hodgepodge of (on their face) unrelated commands smells kinda unorganized at best and unprofessional at worst. Wether or not he's right is up to the reader. For me, I agree with his sentiment.
The solution he's suggesting is to bring all of these commands under one umbrella either by bundling them in an administrative utility or by giving them a prefix that shows they're related to "the PostgreSQL database."
He's getting a lot of pushback that really feels it's coming from the wrong direction. "Just learn it." "It's always been this way." "No one agrees with you." These arguments are unconvincing. That said, there's nothing wrong with just saying, "we're not going to change it because we don't want to."
There is the issue that by introducing new commands that are better organised, the new user will get introduced to more commands instead of fewer - when they run into a problem or if they bought the book, the commands they'll encounter will be the "old" commands.
There's also the learning curve of having a single wrapper-command that can do anything pg-related. The purpose of a command named pg_createuser is obvious, the purpose of a command named pg or pga is not so obvious.
Personally, I sometimes work with Firebird for educational purposes and I can't make heads or tails of their command-line tools (with the exception of isql, but only when I remember it was based on Interbase). To me, the pg tools are much easier to remember, even though their naming isn't always consistent.
Personally, I sometimes work with Firebird for educational purposes and I can't make heads or tails of their command-line tools (with the exception of isql, but only when I remember it was based on Interbase). To me, the pg tools are much easier to remember, even though their naming isn't always consistent.
I do think however that having the pg-commands prefixed with pg_ is actually helpful to both new and experienced users. One reason is that it limits the number of commands matched for command completion after typeing pg_ (which is only 3 characters to type). ISTR some argument against using underscores because they would be hard to type, but I can't understand why.
That said, renaming the commands provides a rather minor benefit at best. Having this much fuss about it is out of proportion IMHO. I remember learning those commands (when pg 7.4.7 was a big deal) and it certainly did not cost me the majority of time that I needed to learn to use pg, and once I did learn them I knew where to find at least the documentation.
My few cents.
--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
Cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.
Cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.
