robert@pttesac.UUCP (Robert Rodriguez) (07/27/88)
I'm all for the concept of public domain software maintenance, but in defense of Lee Hounshell, I'd like to bring up a small point. In the original flame of Lee by I forget whom, stated: >[Lee] did a complete re-write and changed the coding sytle of >the program, although I don't know why! I know why! Seventy five percent of the code that comes over the public domain is almost un-readable. Isn't cb(1) available on all UNIX(tm) releases ? I know less than half of the people who get PD software hack on the code, but it's not easy to look at some of the stuff that I receive. Don't get me wrong, I app- reciate PD software, and I actually sometimes enjoy changing code to my style preference before I store it, but I'm only trying to answer the flamer as to why Lee changed the coding sytle. Consider the following (taken from a public domain chess game): if (color[t]!=neutral) { node->flags |= capture; if (t==xkillr) s +=400; if (atak[xside][t]==0) s += value[board[t]]-board[f]; else if (board[t]>board[f]) s += value[board[t]]-value[board[f]]; else s +=15; } How about this: if(color[t] != neutral) { node->flags |= capture; if(t == xkillr) s += 400; if(atak[xside][t] == 0) s += value[board[t]] - board[f]; else if(board[t] > board[f]) s += value[board[t]] - value[board[f]]; else s += 15; } I prefer the latter. Again, I'd like to say that I'm not saying everyone should either conform to the rules or die, I'm just saying that Lee probably re-wrote some of the code to make it more readable. These opinions are my own and are not those of Pacific Bell. (Although my boss would be pissed if I wrote code like the first example) Robert Rodriguez ESAC, Pacific [*] Bell pacbell!pttesac!robert (213) 604-5175