Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!rogerc
From: rogerc@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Roger Collins)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Student software bashing (was: rtm and uucp)
Message-ID: <3917@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Date: 16 Nov 88 15:34:19 GMT
References: <8409@alice.UUCP> <8597@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <90@lazlo.UUCP> <1988Nov15.180821.20324@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: rogerc@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Roger Collins)
Organization: NCR - E & M Columbia
Lines: 26

In article <1988Nov15.180821.20324@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> The problem with college students is not that they are evil crackers, but
> that college software quality control is not the best, to put it mildly.

The single most shocking realization I had upon entering the professional
world after student life (Univ. of Florida, 1987) was that programmers
credited with writing the BEST operating system in the world wrote
some of the worst code I had every seen.

        1.  Almost every utility can be made to dump core with a little
            negative testing.  (You don't have to use gets(), fgets() works
            on stdin, too.)

        2.  Almost no comments, anywhere.

        3.  Readability absolutely the poorest I have ever seen (mostly
            one-to-three-letter variable names, poor style, etc.).

I realize that much of the code was written decades ago.  And I
have seen some improvement in later releases.  But still nothing that
wouldn't get some red marks from my former professors.

--
Roger Collins
NCR - E&M Columbia
rogerc@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM