Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Things That Are The Devil

I can't remember the first time I was introduced to the term, I'm guessing it was via The Waterboy and Mama Boucher:

Bobby Boucher: [after Reading A Question About Benjamin Franklin] Ben Franklin
Young Bobby Boucher: [Flashback To Bobby's Childhood] Mama, When Did Ben Franklin Invent Electricity?
Mama Boucher: That's Nonsense, I Invented Electricity. Ben Franklin Is The Devil!

There's a thread on Google+ related to my last post, Managing Database Entries (tnsnames.ora) that rekindled the word for me.

Today I posted something to the effect on Twitter. I've decided to start adding things I would consider The Devil, in Mama Boucher's terms, here.

Cary Millsap is The Devil. Why? A year or 2 ago he posted a link on Twitter about why we don't need to double-space anymore after a period. Each and every time I go to double-tap the space bar, I think of that post and curse Cary appropriately.

Triggers are probably The Devil. Rarely have I seen them implemented in a halfway decent manner. Usually, they're used as some work-around because someone was too lazy to update their PL/SQL...or just couldn't figure out a way to accomplish their goal without them (say, like removing direct INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE privileges on the source table...?).

From that last post, tnsnames.ora can be The Devil.

I would say that commas in front of the line are The Devil.

My friend Jason Baer is The Devil. Go to 2:40 in:



That's all I have for now.

What do you consider The Devil?

Update
Me. I can think of at least 47 people who believe I am The Devil. Man...how could I forget something like that.

3 comments:

EscVector said...

The devil is in the detail. Method vs. Methodology, Guess & Test vs. Trace & Profile. Twitter is the devil for making chr(32) redundancy expensive.

oraclenerd said...

"Guess & Test vs Trace & Profile"

I like that one, I'll have to steal it. :)

McG said...

DB triggers are most cetainly the devil!. Along with their second cousins...Oracle Alerts!