kassover@control.crd.ge.com (David Kassover) (02/21/90)
I was hoping not to get involved in a flame war, but: C and Unix have growed like topsy. That's the difficulty, they are an open system, and just about anybody can contribute. Then there are things like Mainframe Operating systems, which were designed to make the applications run fast, not the design of applications feel good. Then there are things like VMS, which is not totally open, but not totally closed. Digital *tells you* the Digital way, and encourages you to use it, so that everybody does it the same way without leaving anyone out in the cold. I'm a professional, and the thing that is most important to me is that my product work, and continue to work. I don't care if it is bigger than I can handle myself (I prefer projects to get that big, I make more money that way 8-) ) It may not matter to you whether a trivial typo causes one of your programs to splatter barfums on your screen, Mr. Holden, but when one of my systems does so to one of my customers and I lose a multi-kilodollar sale or a mega-dollar account because of it, I hurt. Ada may not be perfect, but it and it's philosophy go a long way toward eliminating expensive mistakes. Twenty thousand miles above the surface of Venus is one HELL of a time to find out someone used a decimal point instead of a comma. Just in case no one knows the reference, the following code fragment was responsible for the failure of a control algorithm in a (not too) recent Venus probe: DO 100 I = 1.100 . . . 100 CONTINUE This compiled, and the loop merrily executed only once. So, Mr. Holden, please exercise some restraint, and direct your diatribes to someplace else, like alt.flame, and allow us professionals to go about our business, unhindered. E(nd) O(f) S(ermon)
clement@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Clement Pellerin) (02/21/90)
In article <5417@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> kassover@control.crd.ge.com (David Kassover) writes: > DO 100 I = 1.100 > ... > 100 CONTINUE >This compiled, and the loop merrily executed only once. because Fortran discards spaces. The do statement is in fact an assignment statement. You can check it out by printing the value of DO100I before line 100. No wonder Fortran is not context free! -- news <clement Clement Pellerin, McGill University, Montreal, Canada clement@opus.cs.mcgill.ca