Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdcsu!broehl
From: broehl@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A Hercules Primer
Message-ID: <4332@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 88 18:42:47 GMT
References: <1866@ingr.UUCP> <39500005@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Reply-To: broehl@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 52

I found the posting quoted below so obnoxious I felt I should say something
about it:

In article <39500005@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk> awylie@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk writes:
>This posting is appalling. Your routines contain some horrendous bugs.

Not having seen the posting awylie@pyr1 is referring to, I can't argue
about whether it has bugs or not.
However, anything posted to the net is posted "as-is".  I'm sure that
the posting in question is neither the first nor the last to have some
bugs in it.

>It will not even compile under Microsoft-C. Initialization of automatic
>arrays!!! What broken compiler accpets this???

A great many C compilers that I have used support this feature.  The fact
that Microsoft lacks it is unfortunate, but is certainly not the fault of
the original poster.

>There are other horrors in there which I will not mention.

What "horrors" are these, pray tell?  And why *not* mention them, since the
person who originally posted the source would doubtless like to know about
them?  (and more importantly, has a *right* to know about them; see below)

>Stylistically the whole thing is a mess too, eg capital letters in
>non-preprocessor variables.

To each their own coding style.

>Anyone who would like to get a working version of this mess, with also a
>routine to display text whilst in graphics mode, send me an e-mail.

This is far and away the most irresponsible thing I've seen anyone do on
the net in many, many years.  Take source posted by someone else, publicly
attack them because you don't like the way they code, and
then redistribute their program so you can take credit for "fixing" it.

Yuck.

>------------------------------------------------------------
>Andrew Wylie, University of London Computer Centre,
>20 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1DZ, England.

Is this sort of behaviour *sanctioned* by the U of London Computing Centre?


-- 
	Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept
	Mail: broehl@watdcsu.waterloo{.edu,.csnet,.cdn}
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