Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Uninitialized externals and statics.
Message-ID: <1989Aug26.192845.15395@twwells.com>
Date: 26 Aug 89 19:28:45 GMT
References: <2128@infmx.UUCP> <10764@smoke.BRL.MIL> <478.nlhp3@oracle.nl> <1989Aug19.053711.7462@twwells.com> <1423@csv.viccol.edu.au> <984@m3.mfci.UUCP>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 34

In article <984@m3.mfci.UUCP> karzes@mfci.UUCP (Tom Karzes) writes:
: In article <1423@csv.viccol.edu.au> timcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Tim Cook) writes:
: >In article <1989Aug19.053711.7462@twwells.com>, bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes:
: >> At one point, we got toasted by some of our customers because our
: >> executables were excessively large. It seems that one of our
: >> programmers did things like:
: >>
: >> int     Array[1000] = {0};
: >
: >Let's not misappropriate blame here.  It seems to me that your compiler
: >should take the blame in this scenario.  Your programmer is simply making
: >sure of what will be in "Array" when the program starts (sounds like a
: >worthwhile programming practice).
:
: Actually, given that the programmer is unwilling to rely on implicit
: zero initialization of statics, he/she is is only making sure that that
: the first element of the array is initialized to 0 in this example.

Actually, the programmer was just following someone's brain-damaged
advice to initialize all globals. He had no idea why one might want
to do so. No, he wasn't a very good programmer. Or even a good coder.

Which reminds me of an answer to the "What makes a C expert" question
that I was going to give but didn't get around to. The "competent C
programmer" knows *what* is valid C. The "C expert" knows *why* it is
valid C; moreover, he is capable of selecting the best C tool for the
job, as opposed to merely using the first thing that comes to mind.

Fundamentally, the difference is that of between knowledge and
judgement.

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Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
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