Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!rochester!daemon
From: miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU (Brad Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Spleen venting (was: Re: 32-bit OS)
Message-ID: <1989Aug23.181850.22509@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 23 Aug 89 18:18:50 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department
Lines: 14


    I *hate* 16-bit integers and all of the stupidity it shows: the assumption
    that you can predict the future ("oh, no one could possibly need something
    that large").  Programming is hard.  Arbitrary limits are bad and make
    programming even harder, especially in system software!  Efficiency is only
    *one* issue (I don't care how fast a program does the wrong thing).

Gee, you're right! Well, Apple, I certainly hope you will support only
BIGNUM arithmetic for ints, so you can support future infinite address space
machines. After all, why have any fixed precision when there is still
available memory? And that will make all our current programs work just as
inefficiently when you change processors. ;-)

Sarcastically yours,