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From: cs450a03@uc780.umd.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: RE: Dynamic typing (part 3)
Message-ID: <20MAR91.08580313@uc780.umd.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 91 08:58:03 GMT
References: <815@optima.cs.arizona.edu> <W+3AE38@xds13.ferranti.com>
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Peter da Silva writes:
>In article <815@optima.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
  [[ examples of type-checking, with slant towards doing it dynamically ]]

>This is fine if the code is:
> 
>	Known to be correct and debugged,
>and/or	Your code,
>and	You wrote it recently,
>or	You just finished tracing it all and thus know it intimately.

Hmm... I spend a lot of time debugging and upgrading old code.  There
is a lot of such code around.  Some of it I just replace (like when
there's a better algorithm), some of it I patch.  Lots of it had bugs
that showed up under obscure circumstances--things in C that would
involve type-casting, mallocs, unions, etc.  (and segvs and either
mysterious creeping bugs or core-dumps.)

Oddly enough, the code is still useful, even the sloppily written
stuff.

Oddly enough, I didn't write it.

Oddly enough, I rarely have to trace it.

Even odder, I maintain this code but still manage to spend around half
(often more) my time on development.

Odder still, usually the only part of the comments I find useful are
the ones that identify the purpose of the function, or perhaps the
purpose of a variable.

I will admit that it took me a few months to get 'up to speed', and
that I'm still learning things, but I disagree quite emphatically with
Peter's "must" list.

Raul Rockwell