Great to hear from another former TOPS-20 user....I worked on TOPS back in the early 80s, then VMS of course. Also reverse-engineered (to some degree, more like reverse-compiled) PDP-8 paper tape. All in all, I'll take the docs. :)
Randy On Dec 2, 2009, at 6:42 AM, Mark H. Wood wrote: > On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 02:08:08PM -0800, Randy Turner wrote: >> As an investor, I would rather have my coders use a product with >> documentation to "make progress" on the actual goals of the product, >> rather than reverse-engineer the information they're trying to look >> for. >> >> With the former method, my cost is (n), with the latter method, my >> cost could be unbounded, depending upon how complex the source code >> is (i.e., explicit code, or 14 levels of indirection and C macros >> that have to be understood). >> >> It sounds like you're making the case for documentation to me....and >> I agree. > > Hear, hear! I've done such reverse-engineering. I once disassembled > the compiled code (all there was on the Unsupported tape) for the > TOPS-20 Programmable Command Language; edited it (through many > iterations) into clean, idiomatic, well-commented MACRO-10; studied > how it hooked into the EXEC; and from the coments wrote a user's > manual, so I could figure out what the heck it did. I'm quite proud > of my work. I never, EVER want to do anything like that again. It > was lengthy and exhausting and ultimately unsatisfactory. > > Along the way I learned all the way down to my toes how little > information is conveyed by code about what the designer was thinking > or how he expected his design to be used. That's why, in a commercial > OS, right next to each Reference Manual there is a Programmer's Guide > or a User's Guide. > > I wish I *could* write some of the Programmer's Guides I have wanted > over the years but, obviously, the person who needs one is the person > least able to write one. My PCL manual, proud as I am of it, was a > botch, much too short and incomplete. I simply wasn't able to glean > enough information from the source to write properly. The designer > knows things the rest of us do not, and it is precisely that knowledge > which gives documentation much of its value. > > -- > Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mw...@iupui.edu > Friends don't let friends publish revisable-form documents. ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org
