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From: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Unlimited software warranties
Message-ID: <12600@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 19 Mar 91 13:25:36 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.015256.16098@ico.isc.com> <8024@rsiatl.Dixie.Com> <1991Mar13.021244.2538@ico.isc.com> <1991Mar16.171033.380@am.sublink.org>
Reply-To: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 67
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <1991Mar16.171033.380@am.sublink.org>, alex@am.sublink.org (Alex Martelli) writes:

>I agree with Dick Dunn's lament on c.u.sysv386 - there is a "feature
>frenzy" around, products are sold mostly on feechurs, secondly on
>time-to-market, thirdly on price, and QUALITY just does not seem to be
>on the list.  I am trying to redirect the discussion to c.s-e, because

Amen, Alex: but as to why quality is so little valued in software, look
at the recent discussion on counting "lines" of C code.  This discussion
took a badly-defined goal (counting lines of code in a free-form
language) and provided several solutions, none of which worked.  The
only solution that does work is to count statements according to the
strict Backus-Naur form definition of the language but the attitude
appears to be that this is "too complicated" and that pseudoclever
one-line sed or awk "tools" are more useful.

It's not just marketing that's at fault: it's an unholy alliance of
marketing, impatient for software that sells, and managers who have
forgotten that software is difficult and takes time.  It's also the
time-honored anticompetitive practises of the industry, in which the
big boys announce software, then run to the back room, chain the
programmers to their desks, and start cracking the whip.  Although
IBM pioneered this, Microsoft is now under FTC investigation for
exactly the same sort of practises (New York Times, 3/13/91, p. D1.)

>tools, an ar that will not silently munge my archive if it's over 512

If I had ten dollars for every time a programmer said, that number
will never exceed n, I'd be as rich as Billy Gates...the address
width of the IBM 360 is a good example.  It is easy to avoid magic
numbers and to use malloc in place of static allocation, but these
techniques don't seem to be taught.

>--
>Alex Martelli - (home snailmail:) v. Barontini 27, 40138 Bologna, ITALIA
>Email: (work:) martelli@cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex@am.sublink.org
>Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434;
>Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only), Fidonet: 332/401.3 (home only).

Ah, that explains it: the guy's from a foreign country.  Here in the
United States many of the concerns Alex raises are simply beyond the
ken of many programmers, since the educational system does such a
poor job in teaching students how to read/think/do math.

In the States we laugh at the Soviets and their lag in technology.
When I give seminars in C programming at a company in Chicago that
has hired Russian emigres, the performance of the emigres is MUCH
MUCH better than that of the US students.  This is because (1) these
students learned real math including the calculus in grade school and
(2) the very lack of personal computers taught these students how
to think critically about their code, as "desk-checking" is still
a prized skill in Soviet research institutions where Behemoth is
still the machine of choice.  It was a joy to teach these students
C based on Backus-Naur syntax and hand-execution in preference to
"put it on the machine and see if it breaks."

If programming is going to survive as a profession, programmers
need to design in quality even when management doesn't ask for it.
Why?  Because when the lawsuits begin when the software fails,
managers will point to the programmers as being at fault.  And,
like the guy peddling oatmeal on the boob tube says, writing
quality code is "the right thing to do."
+--------------------------------+ Edward G. Nilges
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