On Thu, 2002-10-10 at 10:19, Andrew Smith wrote:
> > 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)
>
> 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 :-) :-) :-) :-)I think we're pretty good folks on here. Least we're not like L-K. > 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. True enough. Many opinions affect public understanding, however. > 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 wasn't attempting to cover that. I felt that Ian had worked through it quite sufficiently. > 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 :-) :-) :-) :-) Hence my use of 'paraphrase'. A quick Google offers "C gives you enough rope to hang yourself" (Anon) and "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot." (Bjarne Stroustrup). ISTR seeing the variant I used somewhere, but I think I've swapped that out. > MS ... if only he hadn't been hang gliding! As I recall, he was flying his personal jet. I have been wrong before, however. BTW, you owe me �25 for a new smileyometer, since the dial on mine just flew across the room on parsing your email. Greg Sheard Technical Director ECSC Ltd. www.ecsc.co.uk Speaking for nobody, especially not myself. DCLXVI: Roman numeral of the Beast.
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