Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!hubcap!disd
From: disd@hubcap.UUCP (Gary Heffelfinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: divide by 0 problem in "info"?  Also: GOMF
Message-ID: <2915@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 31 Aug 88 18:49:12 GMT
References: <2914@hubcap.UUCP>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 50

From article <2914@hubcap.UUCP>, by rchampe@hubcap.UUCP (Richard Champeaux):
> In article <1841@kalliope.rice.edu>, phil@rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>> 
> 
>     GOMF seems to catch a lot of the system errors, both the "Task Held"
> and the GURU ones.  However, it doesn't tend to catch the ones I got it for,
> the ones that the programs I'm writting create.  To quote the manual:
> 
>           The third is a catastrophic system failure chaaracterized by an
>      instant lockup of the entire system.  Unfortunately, this 'sudden death'
>      is fatal to all programs, including GOMF.  Luckily, programmers so inept
>      as to write software that does this seldom get their work published, and
>      as such, this condition is very rarely encountered.
My, my, my.  Aren't they sweet?  I assume that they mean that the
condition will rarely be encountered in commercial software, but it sure
isn't nice to call potential customers "inept".  This sort of thing has
no place in documentation.  A simple "Since most software will be
thoroughly tested by the time you purchase it, you will rarely encounter
this condition." would be sufficient.  Sheesh.  No need to insult.

> 
>    Well I guess that makes me an inept programmer, because I get a lot of 
> these.  They don't all cause a complete system lockup.  My favorite one that
> GOMF misses is one that causes GOMF's "guru buster" picture to appear and
> stay there.  Some times the mouse locks up, sometimes it doesn't.  I don't
> even get to decode the GURU MEDITATION ERROR because it never shows up and
> if I reboot, I get thrown back to kickstart.
I don't think that any of this is a measure of ineptness.  Heck we've
all seen the "fireworks" associated with an invalid pointer.  Does GOMF
trap these?  I don't consider myself to be inept, and I see these things
happen now and then.  (Not inept, but perhaps a bit misguided at times :-)





Gary









-- 
Gary Heffelfinger   ---   Employed by, but not the mouthpiece of 
                          Clemson University.
---===      Amiga.  The computer for the best of us.     ===---