>>
Thank you for the thorough reply. Now I get it. It still makes me uncomfortable to store a bogus value, but I can see there is a reason for doing it. I have had zero experience with data warehousing and didn't think of that at all.
>>
>>It really wasn't personal. I would have had the same response to anyone else. What you said contradicted something I have always known.
>>
>>BTW, I was succeeding in this industry when you were still in school. As this proves, though, there is always more to learn. >>
>>OK, thanks, I'm glad you picked up something from it.
>>
>>I don't know when you started, but I got started in 1987, and won some awards for systems automation with a set of FoxPro apps from the U.S. Dept of Agriculture in 1989/1990. My first boss was Mike Antonovich, who was a fantasic first boss.
>
>1980 for me, although the first 11 years were on mainframes. Which wasn't all bad. My first language was assembler, which is a good foundation.
*Real* programmers saw assembler as a crutch <bg>
I was looking for high-level languages from day one ( day one being Pets, TRS-80 and Apples in 79-81 ) I wanted Lisp and stuff. Never figured out what to do with it. ( though I did learn to talk funny ) Got pretty good with Turtle. <s>
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
