== vs =

[Dave Sill]

In article <931 at micomvax.UUCP> Ray Dunn <micomvax!ray> writes:
>I assume everyone still remembers this discussion, my systems news
>processing is so behind that......anyway....

I'm sure they wish they could forget it by now.

>In <11915 at brl-adm.ARPA> dsill at NSWC-OAS.arpa (Dave Sill) suggests that the
>answer is "using competant [sic] C programmers".
>
>This attitude, as well as being incompetently arrogant, just fails to
>recognize the realities of life.

Yeah, right, and it's realistic to expect something as fundamental as
the assignment operator to be changed at this point.  That remark
*was* flippant, for which I apologize.

>What he is [indirectly] saying, for example, is:
>
>...that lint is unnecessary, we should rely on the competence of the
>programmer and not use lint.

Not at all true.  I'm a firm believer in `lint'.  If you want to make
your `lint' complain about "=" in conditional contexts, that's fine
with me.  I don't think you should expect the language to be changed
just because you and a few others want it to.

>>...that we should rely on his own (in)ability to spell rather than attempt
>to define a spelling methodology that would avoid him making errors [I don't
>believe in spelling wars, but this was too relevant to avoid].

Yes, a perfect example!  I misspelled "competent", a common enough
mistake, but you don't hear me saying we should change the spelling of
"competent" to "competant", do you?  It's just more trouble than it's
worth, even if many people make the same mistake.  [As an aside, I
*do* have a spelling methodology.  I run `ispell' on all my postings.
I fixed the misspelled "competent", but overwrote the fixed version
when I went back into emacs to make other changes.]

>...that the recent language extensions which, for example, allow parameter
>type specifications, are unneccessary [sic] because we should rely on the
>programmer to always give the correct argument types to function calls!

I've said it before: I think function prototypes are A Good Thing.  I
just don't think they should have been added to C.  C + x != C, where
x = {function prototypes, honored parentheses, et cetera}.

>Dave, don't you believe in removing from system designs, as much of the
>human ability to make mistakes as possible?

Absolutely.  But I also realize that some things are just too hard to
change.  The way to fix them is to design a new system without them
(hint: what comes after C?).

>> Like it or lump it.  It will never change.
>
>Dave, the beauty of making statements like this and acting on them, is that
>you will always be right!  It is wonderfully self fulfilling.  You'll never
>achieve anything of course, but you'll always be right!

I'm not being stubborn or arrogant, I'm being pragmatic.

>Remember me the next time you discover a "stupid" error in the code you are
>writing, or when a typo costs you a couple of days work, or a poorly
>designed user interface costs you a bonus!  All of these could be avoided if
>you were competent in handling them!

How many times can *you* use "competent" in one message?  

>Followups should perhaps be sent to alt.flame, you will notice the complete
>absence of smiley faces (or is that spelt faeces)?

I think that's "feces". :-)  I also think we should drop this
discussion from comp.lang.c, but use e-mail if we really must continue
it.

=========
The opinions expressed above are mine.

"I have enough trouble socializing with people.  I don't need some
object saying `good morning' to me."
					-- Ted Nelson