Part I control statement list generator
I think this could be simplified with a permuation but
first, this problem of creating a list based on certain conditions,
This is the rough structure of my list generator:
First I have a table with people in it; stores a person's id, gender, orientation, interested partner, age
The orientation is uncertain because in some cases it seems redundant like a transgender person declaring a gender
Anyway, so given the five pieces of information
I create an "alogrithm?" or control statement list generator based on user id's like this:
Start with gender then orientation then age The age part is concerning, I have a character fix of 2, eg. 10 to 99
I am doing in ten years like 10 to 20, 20 to 30, etc... but using a <= operator
So
person A looking for person B
Person A is a male, straight, age<=20
One branch of the control statement is about 30 lines or less which doesn't seem bad, but that's 3 x 6 x 3 x 30 = ~ 170 lines of code which doesn't seem bad. I'm also concerned about using switch instead of a try-all-till-found sort of control system
The multiplication mambo jambo over there is from the three specifications of a person:
gender: male,female,both
orientation: straight, lesbian, gay, bi, don't care to say, other
date sought: male, female, both
I realize too that this can be much better
Already my form is ugly, there are 7 lines to be filled including username, email, password.
Part II who has viewed who
This is a matter of what works best or are they the same.
I want the experience to be this: once you've passed a person eg. declared you weren't interested in him / her, you don't see them again, unless you want to.
I'm not sure yet how I will generate a list, I know already that it won't be images, but numbers eg. text only, but how do you have a current list eg. when new members sign up after you have generated a list? This is more related above but...
The thought is to create a separate table with at least three columns: id, user, user id viewed
Can it be better than that?
The problem here is that say 16 people exist on the website, then for each person to look at the other person, what is that 16 x 15 = 240 columns? Just from 16 people?
Can it be better?
Thanks for any suggestions
