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From: felkl@aste16.Berkeley.EDU (Feliks Kluzniak)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Can I talk about Parlog here?
Message-ID: <1990Nov22.174222.8614@ida.liu.se>
Date: 22 Nov 90 17:42:22 GMT
References: <2540@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Sender: news@ida.liu.se (News Subsystem)
Reply-To: felkl@aste16.Berkeley.EDU (Feliks Kluzniak)
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
Lines: 27

In article <2540@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, Jim Crammond says:

|> 
|> Sorry, but as the "irresponsible" professional who wrote the Parallel Parlog
|> system I remain offended....
|>  ...
|> I would agree that the compiler was - and is - erroneous for not detecting
|> bad Parlog programs and rejecting them, which is possible to do; however
|> given limited resources this was not high enough on the priority list.
|> 
|> The parallel parlog system isn't a commercial piece of software (although
|> when used correctly it is more robust than some commercial systems I have
|> seen). When you develop a system as part of research you tend to have to
|> sacrifice some robustness/useability in favour more "publishable" things.

Since Jim Crammond chose to post only his own part of the exchange we
had through e-mail, I will refrain from posting my answer. This part of
his own text says it all: what remains is whether we deem such behaviour
responsible and professional or not. I DON't think this is a matter of
taste, but let it rest. It is not a particular system or person that is
of interest here, but whether people wish to maintain (and insist on
maintaining) certain standards of programming.  Personally, I find the
distinction between commercial software and research software (i.e.
software that just does not have to work, as long as it works
sometimes!) rather strange. As a practising programmer, I am shocked by
the apparently widespread acceptance of this distinction. 

--- Feliks Kluzniak