Ben Scott writes: > Then there's the fact that every moron programmer in the world (and > there are legions of moron programmers) assume integers and pointers > are 32-bits, and their code breaks horribly if recompiled for a 64-bit > architecture. So even if you have source, it's not just a matter of > recompiling, in most cases.
The reason why we find ourselves in this mess is because we treat programming as a task (or, some would even say, an "art") instead of what it actually is: engineering. Code that causes the compiler to emit warnings, doesn't contain reasonable asserts, contains lots of casts and "cute" union tricks, was "designed" with nary a thought about endian/sizeof issues, and is uncommented reminds me of carpentry jobs in which I've seen windows installed without flashing, doors that are crooked, and joists are just sawed through haphazardly. Would you pay a carpenter for such work? Nope. Do programmers produce such work? Frequently, yes. What is this attributable to?: market forces, time-to-market pressure, ignorance, apathy, etc. I was pretty happy the day that somebody took a network protocol stack that I had written, compiled it on a 64-bit system that I did not have access to, whereupon it compiled without warnings and WORKED CORRECTLY. Regards, --kevin -- GnuPG ID: B280F24E Never could stand that dog. alumni.unh.edu!kdc -- Tom Waits _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
