NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/os/linux/17730

Text File | 1992-11-24 | 2.7 KB | 57 lines

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
From: [e-mail] (Jim Segrave)
Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!demon!grendel.demon.co.uk!jes
Subject: Re: SLS Mail/News?
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Distribution: world
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.20 $
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Lines: 43
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:14:07 +0000
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ed Carp) writes:
> Jim Segrave ([e-mail]) wrote:
>  [deleted]
> Better yet, don't use it at all.  the mail included with mailpak-1.3 was
> intended to be a provisional measure until a better solution could be
> found.  Get smail-3.1.28 - it's a much better mailer.
>
> mail will *not* be included in mailpak-1.4, BTW...I've stopped using it
> long ago.

agreed

>
> I don't agree with your assertion that C has a "bad name in the rest of the
> programming world".  Is your programming world composed of programmers
> writing COBOL applications?  C gives one the ability, the freedom, to write
> any manner of code desired.  If one wants to write beautiful code, the
> opportunity is there.  If one wants to write ugly code, C will not stop you.

No, almost all my programming is in C and assembler, I only know one Cobol
programmer (she's a relative, so I have to speak to her :-). Nonetheless,
C does have a bad reputation in a large parts of the commercial world.
The most common summary is that it's a 'high level assembler'. The
freedom C gives you allows the writing of code which is very difficult to
debug and maintain when carelessly used. And, sadly, there's a lot of ill
designed and executed code out there. Some of the other, more mollycoddling,
languages restrict the programmer in ways which often make the code more
maintainable. I don't wish to give up C programming, but I can't help
expressing repugnance at what I consider hack programming (in the most
perjorative sense of the word). If some of the people who've had a go
at mail (or any of a large number of other fair sized C programs) had
shown the professionalism necessary to spend a small amount of time
organising their code and thinking about maintainability, readability,
etc. they would probably have produced a huge nett savings for the world
at large. I doubt that I'm the first to find some bugs in this program.
I'm sure I haven't found them all. I *know* other people are going to
go through the same exercise. Multiply the number of followers-on by
the time it takes them to first get the overall structure of the program
and then find and fix the problems. Was an hour saved by sloppy coding
such a bargain after all?
--
Jim Segrave (Segrave Software Services)     [e-mail]