A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.
Michael
At 11:37 AM 3/15/2024, Bob Bridges wrote:
To rant on a related subject, I once worked at a company that
instituted code reviews; a new program would be gone over by a
half-dozen coworkers to be sure it adhered to local standards. This
sort of thing is always painful to the coder, and nevertheless (I
admit reluctantly) can have considerable value if done right. One
problem I had with it, though, is that the standards we created for
ourselves admitted that there are times when exceptions should be
made for special cases, and yet when those cases arose no exceptions
were ever allowed; the team invariably flinched, leaned back in
their seats and said "no, that's not according to our standards".
One particular example always rankled: Whenever someone felt the
need to use a STRING or UNSTRING command (I should have said we were
COBOL developers), the team always struck it down on the grounds
that STRING and UNSTRING are unusual commands and some COBOL coders
would be unfamiliar with it. My contention here is that that's
absolutely true, and it's the job of the COBOL coder to ~learn~ the
STRING and UNSTRING statements, as tools of his profession. I never
persuaded anyone to that view, though.
---
Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313
/* Democracy is where you can say what you think even if you don't think. */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On
Behalf Of Rupert Reynolds
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2024 22:22
There's nothing wrong with 'signal', of course, except that a lot of
people reading the code won't be expecting it :-)
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