Dear Mr. Mintchell, I read your article “Creative or Efficient” (Automation World, February, p. 6) and am in total agreement with you. I set a rule for myself years ago that simply states “no hand coding.” I use all high level programming tools. Flow charts, OPC servers, data historians, programs that automate Excel spreadsheets, serve out Web pages and so on. Never wrote a single line of C++, Visual Basic or HTML. Too hard to maintain, too hard to debug. Anyone that knows the basics can understand and maintain the systems I design.
I resisted the ego trip to go down the C++ road years ago and am very happy I did. That was a tough one because “I wanted to be cool!”
So the tools are here today to automate anything without the need for low level programming tools. I challenge your readers to come up with one automation design that proves the former sentence wrong.
Jock Stucki
Maintenance Engineer
Wabash Plastics, Inc.
