Saturday, November 26, 2011

Panning for Gold

"Using scripts to process data is more like panning for gold than transmuting lead into gold.  So if there is gold in the garbage, the scripts can find it, consolidate it, and output it in a shiny pretty form.  If there isn't any gold, then you will just get some finely sorted and polished garbage." - Joe (Joeware.net)

I couldn't agree more.  It takes the age-old phrase of "garbage-in = garbage-out" and sprinkles some technical context on it like a good seasoning on a grilled chicken (can you tell I'm hungry?)

This also reminded me of a quote from a colleague (and former supervisor) regarding the use of software-based "automation" for business processes:  "If you automate a broken process, you only get an automated broken process." (fix the process before you try to automate it!!)

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