Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 03:11:14 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brad.knowles@skynet.be (Brad Knowles) Cc: keichii@peorth.iteration.net (Michael C . Wu), jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org (j mckitrick), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: bad programming practice? Message-ID: <200102240311.UAA06173@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <v0422080db6bcadff09c5@[10.0.1.2]> from "Brad Knowles" at Feb 24, 2001 01:21:28 AM
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> This may be an Urban Legend, but I understand that even Einstein > divided by zero, by mistake. I think you are talking about the Lorentz transformation; if so, it wasn't a mistake. 8-). > It would certainly help me if more people were paranoid as > possible and did things like this -- I can't tell you how many times > I've tried to compile something where there was an elementary error > of this sort which would have been caught by better programming > techniques. Or a better programmer? I don't think it's unreasonable to expect tools to do the work of dealing with what are, in 20/20 hindsight, language design deficiencies (personally, I still think there should be sized types, and that volatile ought to be a qualifier on functions effecting their external references, and not on storage classes, and that prototypes and object file decorations are an artifact of people too lazy to rewrite linker code and object file formats, instead of making it a problem for compiler users to have to deal with). I also don't feel that it's elitist to have people who can't get code correct without resorting to techniques either be forced to use such tools, or get a job in another field. > The truly sad thing is that many times it is much harder to find > things like this because many programmers are so sloppy, or compilers > are so different on so many machines, that most programs I end up > building from source either generate a lot of warnings and the > attitude is that this is okay, or the build scripts explicitly turn > off all warnings because the programmers don't want to hear about it. All of which argues for more rigorous language design and higher employment standards. Lacking the first, well, McDonalds is hiring in my neighborhood, and people who aren't qualified for the job for which they are hired should seek other employment. There is nothing worse than someone borderline who pads their resume. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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