> On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 15:23, Rick Matthews wrote:
>> Ian Spare wrote:
>> >
>> > Unless you don't think that 5+1 is 6 then we can probably assume
>> > it's true :-)
>>
>> I'm not a C programmer, but I do have a fair amount of programming and
>> scripting experience. If the error is in fact, as straightforward as:
>> length of file name + 4 ('.diff') + 1 (end marker), then I have
>> trouble understanding:
>>
>> - How it has been in production for 3 years
>> - How it made it through at least 6 revision cycles
>> - How it has not been spotted by the thousands of eyeballs that have
>> seen it
>> - Why it only affects a literal handful of people
>>
>> The older, inferior languages that I have used would complain if you
>> specifically asked for a 1 gallon bucket and then tried to put 2
>> gallons of water in it. Or if they didn't complain, they would put 1
>> gallon in your bucket and throw away the other gallon. I guess it
>> takes a new and improved language to ignore the defined structure and
>> blindly corrupt surrounding memory.
>
> To paraphrase the popular saying, "C gives the programmer just enough
> rope to shoot himself in the foot" =]
>
> Having said that, I prefer people having to know how much memory
> they're using. Just imagine if, for example, Windows was written in a
> language that automatically made the bucket larger on demand! (no
> flames, please)
>
> Just my �0.02
>
> Greg Sheard
Actually - these sort of comments (Rick AND Greg) are pretty pointless
on this list.
They usually end up with people have flame wars about something they
sometimes know little about :-) :-) :-) :-)
Different languages are better for different reasons.
Some people like to be able to tell the computer what to do.
Others prefer the computer to tell them what to do :-)
Many people's opinion that a language is inferior does not make it
inferior.
The simple answer to Rick's question is his mistake ... he mistakenly
said that ".diff" is 4 characters and not 5.
People make mistakes, others may not notice them.
Some mistakes may only cause bugs in unusual circumstances.
I don't know how many times I've found a bug and tried to work
out why it had the effect it did and given up.
I may be wrong - but I thought the saying was:
"C gives the programmer just enough rope to hang himself" :-) :-) :-) :-)
I'd prefer to hang myself than let a computer do it :-) :-) :-) :-)
--
-Cheers
-Andrew
MS ... if only he hadn't been hang gliding!
