questions from using lint

Kay Dekker kay at warwick.UUCP
Sat Apr 26 16:49:23 AEST 1986


In article <7097 at cca.UUCP> dewitt at cca.UUCP (Mark DeWitt) writes:
>After three years of C programming I'm just starting to use lint, so
>please no negative reinforcement by flaming about how stupid my questions
>are, lest I give up on it entirely :-).

Mark, I'm not flaming you, but I *am* worried!  If you've been programming
in C for 3 years and not using lint then EITHER 1) Your system doesn't *have*
lint.  You have my profound sympathy. OR 2) Nobody ever taught you about
using lint.  I wonder why not? OR 3) You never realised that using lint
was important.  You must have wasted many hours (that you could have spent
playing Rogue or whatever :-)) chasing problems down that lint might well
have indicated to you.

People, what are *we* doing wrong when somebody can spend 3 years programming
in a particular language and only then start using one of the most important
development tools for it?

It's got to the point when if I'm doing program surgery and someone comes up
saying that their program "doesn't work", if they haven't brought a
line-numbered listing of the source AND a lint output, I don't really want
to start looking for the problems.
							Kay.
-- 
"I AM; YOU ARE; HELLO: all else is poetry"
			... mcvax!ukc!warwick!kay



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