Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!bacchus.pa.dec.com!decuac!mountn.dec.com!minow
From: minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Shipping bogus code (was: Re: prototypes required ?)
Message-ID: <1994@mountn.dec.com>
Date: 28 Oct 90 23:31:04 GMT
References: <14164@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2150@lupine.NCD.COM> <27066@mimsy.umd.edu> <2173@lupine.NCD.COM> <27098@mimsy.umd.edu> <1990Oct22.231028.24623@zoo.toronto.edu> <18632@rpp386.cactus.org> <1990Oct24.164257.20928@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: minow@mountn.UUCP (Martin Minow)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 23

In article <1990Oct24.164257.20928@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu
(Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <18632@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II)
writes:
>>I think Henry is being equally naive - if a vendor were required to fix
>>every last bug prior to shipping a new release, we'd still be running on
>>ENIACs...

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  In the 1960's worked for several years on
a grandchild of Einiac (Eniac > Besk > Trask) that had a totally bug-free
Algol-60 compiler (with prototypes and all).  Rumor was that it had been
written by E. Dijkstra.

>Shipping an imperfect product is inevitable.

I respectfully disagree with my esteemed collegue.  Perhaps more importantly,
I worry that it is dangerous to accept "inevitable imperfection" as it
does not set a suitable goal for system/compiler/application developers.
The problem is, however, that bug-free code is often invisble (my digital
watch is bug-free, but I don't think of it as "software.")

Martin Minow
minow@bolt.enet.dec.com