Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!rutgers!att!ihlpb!res
From: res@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Rich Strebendt)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Summary: Interesting code comment
Message-ID: <9578@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Date: 13 Feb 89 22:36:50 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <532@geovision.UUCP> <4575@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> <1051@vsi.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 35

In article <1051@vsi.COM>, friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
| In article <20373@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes:
|| Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment
|| that one can find when reading through source code.
| 
| Finally, us old Gosmacs hackers will recognize the pseudo-famous
| comment in display.c by James Gosling, then at CMU:

	[Comment edited to save a modicum of bandwidth]

| 			    **************
| 			    *  BEWARE!!  *
| 			    **************
| 			All ye who enter here:
| 		    Most of the code in this module
| 		       is twisted beyond belief!
| 			   Tread carefully.
| 		    If you think you understand it,
| 			      You Don't,
| 			    So Look Again.

Along this same line, I recall hearing about a comment found in some
code for the No. 1 ESS.  The instruction set for that telephone
switching machine's processor is rich in side effects.  Some
programmers could write two programs in one -- the one given by the
code and the second formed by the side effects of those same
instructions.  Just after a programmer left to return to school, his
boss was scanning the code he had just finished.  One instruction in
the code did not seem to make any sense, but it was left in the
program anyway.  It carried a one word comment:

		SUBTLE

				Rich Strebendt
				...!att!ihlpb!res