rogerc@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Roger Collins) (11/16/88)
In article <1988Nov15.180821.20324@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > The problem with college students is not that they are evil crackers, but > that college software quality control is not the best, to put it mildly. The single most shocking realization I had upon entering the professional world after student life (Univ. of Florida, 1987) was that programmers credited with writing the BEST operating system in the world wrote some of the worst code I had every seen. 1. Almost every utility can be made to dump core with a little negative testing. (You don't have to use gets(), fgets() works on stdin, too.) 2. Almost no comments, anywhere. 3. Readability absolutely the poorest I have ever seen (mostly one-to-three-letter variable names, poor style, etc.). I realize that much of the code was written decades ago. And I have seen some improvement in later releases. But still nothing that wouldn't get some red marks from my former professors. -- Roger Collins NCR - E&M Columbia rogerc@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM
campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) (11/19/88)
In article <3917@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM> rogerc@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Roger Collins) writes: } }The single most shocking realization I had upon entering the professional }world after student life (Univ. of Florida, 1987) was that programmers }credited with writing the BEST operating system in the world wrote }some of the worst code I had every seen. The BEST operating system in the world? Which one is that? Got your asbestos suit on? "Go ahead, punk, make my day..." Seriously, if I'm correct in guessing that you're talking about UNIX, I don't think anyone -- even anyone from AT&T -- would claim with a straight face that UNIX is the world's most reliable, maintainable, and well coded operating system in the world. It is probably the most portable, probably the most flexible, and probably the most fun for programmers to play with, but far from the most elegantly written. -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. campbell@bsw.com 120 Fulton Street wjh12!redsox!campbell Boston, MA 02146