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From: rbj@icst-cmr (Root Boy Jim)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: questions from using lint
Message-ID: <453@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 30-Apr-86 21:10:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.453
Posted: Wed Apr 30 21:10:20 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 4-May-86 05:36:08 EDT
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> In article <7097@cca.UUCP> dewitt@cca.UUCP (Mark DeWitt) writes:
> >After three years of C programming I'm just starting to use lint, so
> >please no negative reinforcement by flaming about how stupid my questions
> >are, lest I give up on it entirely :-).
> 
> Mark, I'm not flaming you, but I *am* worried!  If you've been programming
> in C for 3 years and not using lint then EITHER 1) Your system doesn't *have*
> lint.  You have my profound sympathy. OR 2) Nobody ever taught you about
> using lint.  I wonder why not? OR 3) You never realised that using lint
> was important.  You must have wasted many hours (that you could have spent
> playing Rogue or whatever :-)) chasing problems down that lint might well
> have indicated to you.
> 
> People, what are *we* doing wrong when somebody can spend 3 years programming
> in a particular language and only then start using one of the most important
> development tools for it?
> 
> It's got to the point when if I'm doing program surgery and someone comes up
> saying that their program "doesn't work", if they haven't brought a
> line-numbered listing of the source AND a lint output, I don't really want
> to start looking for the problems.
> 							Kay.
> -- 
> "I AM; YOU ARE; HELLO: all else is poetry"
> 			... mcvax!ukc!warwick!kay
 
You people fail to realize that some of us out here don't like lint.
It complains too much about what I do. I refuse to go any further
than generating no compiler warnings. I know what I'm doing. When I
goof, I'll fix it myself. I refuse to add extra casts to keep lint happy.

Before you start flaming my style, let me say I am quite good.
I am also quite philosophical and attentive to coding style.
My outlook is just different. I program for myself. If it is applicable
to you, fine. I have my own criteria which I rarely see embraced by
others waving standardization flags.

Most of the code I have written was intrinsically non-portable. I *do*
appreciate portability as a spectrum concept, but not as a binary one.

This is just me. I'm not sure I would recommend my methods to anyone
else, especially novices. My experience was obtained with more than a
few battle scars. There are probably easier ways.

	(Root Boy) Jim Cottrell		<rbj@cmr>
	"I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack"