Maybe you should have bought a lottery ticket that day?
On 2021-08-21 22:32, Tom Conley wrote:
On 8/21/2021 9:31 PM, Bob Bridges wrote:
This part of the thread got me thinking. How often do you write a
program that works right the first time, with no compile or execution
errors? I'm not talking about two-liners, of course, or even
ten-liners; let's say 30 or thereabouts. Please specify the
language, too, since it seems to me they vary in error-prone-ness.
I've done it occasionally, but by "occasionally" I mean "less than
one time in twenty"; maybe much less, I'm not sure, and only once in
my life when anyone was watching. That was in PL/C; mostly nowadays
I write in REXX and VBA.
In fact my REXXes typically start out with at least ten or fifteen
lines of boilerplate, and any VBA/Excel program likely relies on a
raft of common functions and/or objects that are part of my regular
library, so when I say "30 lines", some of those lines don't really
count.
---
Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313
/* The schools of ancient morality had four cardinal virtues: justice
in human relations, prudence in the directions of affairs, fortitude
in bearing trouble or sorrow, temperance or self-restraint. But they
knew nothing of mercy or forgiveness, which is not natural to the
human heart. Forgiveness is an exotic, which Christ brought with Him
from Heaven. -F.B.Meyer */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On
Behalf Of Tom Brennan
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2021 13:41
....one of my other supervisors/teachers would tell me about her
application experience. She said no matter how complex her COBOL
programs were, they would not only compile first time but would run
perfectly. This of course was due to her rigorous desk-checking
which I assume took days.
I remember thinking "that's crazy" but I just kept quiet. I'll give
her a break because that could have been at the time of card punching
where such desk-checking made far more sense.
I once wrote an IDMS database exit in assembler that ran correctly the
first time, and never required modification in the years that
followed. It is indeed the rarest of birds. Never before nor since
have I had the pleasure of seeing a program run perfectly the first
time and never require modification.
Regards,
Tom Conley
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