I think that, without realizing it, Cristian hit the nail on the head.
On Tue, 12 Jun 2001 01:04:35 +0300, Cristian Burneci wrote:
> Anyway, when it comes to buggy, crappy, hastily written software,
> it really doesn't matter what tools had been used to produce it.
^^^^^
[Putting on Oldster hat]
I can remember the days when programers wrote code.
It didn't matter what language, or what platform, it was the programer
who wrote and tested and debugged and rewrote and retested.
I can even remember when employers who ran Big Blue mainframes, and COBOL
for financial applications [what it was designed to do] started putting
requirements in their "help wanted" ads that potential employees be able
to use this code generator or that code generator [although they didn't
call them that].
Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, etc etc etc are *NOT* languages. They are tools
which should help a good programmer turn out good programs faster. But
there are two big problems: The framework sometimes is flawed and
creates bad code and major bugs; programmers forget how to program and
instead just learn how to use the tools.
I stopped studying C when I realized that it could quite easily do
anything that assembler could do ... and I didn't want to take the
chance of rewriting or deleting stuff on my MACHINE or the chips of
others. My hacker [in the original good sense of the word, not as
misused today to name specious brats with probably adolescent sexual
frustrations] son did go on to learn C pretty darn well; he learned it
because he was working in an environment [dozerware NT & Win9x] where
certain things had to be changed if things were going to work at all.
He also hacks in machine code, although he may not realize it ...
because he works on video games and GameShark codes. <G> But he has
always used a pure portable ANSI C that he didn't have to worry about
doing things he didn't ask it to do, or forcing it to do something it
didn't want to do.
The problem with much code cutting [for the youngnsters, that means
programming] today is that the programmers don't program. They use a
program to write their programs; in C they don't know how to design a
dedicated lib file, so they throw in more than necessary which means more
chances for things to go wrong ... and if you could look at *everything*
behind their "finished code" you would see as much spaghetti as you see
on the webpages that use javascript templates with lines that really
aren't necessary but are left in because the coder doesn't know enough
to know they're unnecessary excess dross.
[Exit Oldtimer Mode]
IMNSHO
l.d.
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
