jim@ISM780B.UUCP (02/07/85)
> In other words, if those who write Unix utilities, surely the > top level of C hackers, routinely write bad code -- There is no evidence whatsoever for this; in fact, the evidence that these people are *not* top level C *programmers*, namely the poor quality of their code, is overwhelming. There are many very good C programmers around, but apparently very few of them are writing code at Bell Labs that is getting released. I sure wouldn't waste good programmers on that. I find programs like tbl or cc to be pure trash from the point of view of software engineering. I know the people wrote those are very bright, good conceptual people, but they have been part of the Bell culture for a long time, and I doubt that Bell has done much to challenge their habits or train them in software engineering techniques, or help them develop their *coding* skills. Of course, those programs and many of the other utilities were written a long time ago, and the people who wrote them may be much better now. In fact, I would expect people writing utilities to be junior and inexperienced; experienced programmers go on to do more sophisticated system design. It *is* encouraging that C++ could be developed at the labs, and I would hope it and its author and others with some concept of modern software engineering will have an effect on what comes out of there, although it will probably take a long time. -- Jim Balter, INTERACTIVE Systems (ima!jim)