From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id TAA23436 for caml-red; Thu, 9 Nov 2000 19:03:32 +0100 (MET) Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA05815 for ; Thu, 9 Nov 2000 02:52:27 +0100 (MET) Received: from cepheus.azstarnet.com (cepheus.azstarnet.com [169.197.56.195]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id eA91qQ919113 for ; Thu, 9 Nov 2000 02:52:26 +0100 (MET) Received: from dylan (dialup002ip111.tus.azstarnet.com [169.197.14.111]) by cepheus.azstarnet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA02721 for ; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 18:52:17 -0700 (MST) X-Sent-via: StarNet http://www.azstarnet.com/ Message-ID: <000401c049f0$50220780$210148bf@dylan> From: "David McClain" To: Subject: Oh, how far we HAVEN'T come! Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 18:56:42 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr I just received the latest copy of IEEE Computer Magazine - I had to double check that it was this month's issue and not April! The very back article about the "profession" was written by Neville Holmes, U. of Tasmania. It is embarrasing to the point that I hesitate to offer that I am a member of the IEEE Computer Society. He starts off alright by talking about the difficulty of producing correct code in the absense of type checking and syntax error reporting (my interpretation, not his), and then by the third paragraph when he states "Much could be done to help programmers avoid such coding errors.", he totally looses me to the point of anger! He is concerned about coding conventions such as how to abbreviate identifiers, and how to match up enclosing braces, and placement of semicolons.... What an opportunity lost to the ML community. Is this all the further we have managed to come? Totally Pissed!!!! - D.McClain, Sr. Scientist, Raytheon Missile Systems Co., Tucson, AZ