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A comment on Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file software. Parent comment

Re:Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file... by ratww on Sunday May 22, 2022 @12:27PM (#31469909)
I also did some Perl and that was super common. I also remember most 90s non-web software also using flat files. Even enterprise stuff, even when they had centralized storage in a file server. Sometimes they had databases but those were also accessed directly in the disk, sqlite-style. I remember seeing Clipper, FoxPro and MS Access being used in this manner.

After Perl I graduated to doing web stuff with a Microsoft Access (!) file stored in the disk alongside my .ASP scripts, exactly like one would do with sqlite today. It was quite performant.

I wonder if your "internet mentor" was the same as mine: Matt from Matt's Script Archive @ http://www.scriptarchive.com.

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Re:Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file... by config_yml on Sunday May 22, 2022 @12:49PM (#31470174)
I remember scriptarchive, which I’ve browsed quite a lot, but it wasnt’t Matt. It was a german guy who had a similiar script collection, some of which he sold online. He reviewed and even tested my scripts and helped me along when I got stuck on incorrect cgi-bin file permissions or syntax errors and stuff like that when I was just learning things. Invaluable.
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Re:Smaller is better – The rise, fall, and rise of flat file... by ThePhysicist on Sunday May 22, 2022 @02:16PM (#31471124)
Ha, at that time I ran a website in Germany where I published my own Perl scripts for web forums, guestbooks, counters etc. (all based on flat files) and I helped other people getting started with web programming and "hacking" as well. I know there were a few such sites at the time but mine was quite popular in Germany. We had a really nice community at the time, I still fondly remember all the discussions and the general "small world" feeling the Internet had back then. I guess if you tried to build an online community like that today it would get overrun by trolls and spambots in no time. Those were the good old days.
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