Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: The Ten Commandments for C Programmers
Message-ID: <1989Apr30.003346.25362@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Apr26.191350.7151@utzoo.uucp> <693@mccc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 89 00:33:46 GMT

In article <693@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>=Thou shalt make thy program's purpose and structure
>=clear to thy fellow man by using the
>                     ^^^
>                     
>Say, Henry, you won't mind if I change that to "programmers" or
>"computeroids" or "computersaurus" or something before I hand it out to
>my classes???  ;-)

Standard pseudoBiblical usage :-) follows the English-language convention
that masculine forms double as generic forms, even though use of this
slightly unfortunate convention is now believed to be the moral equivalent
of rape or child abuse (to judge by the reactions the most innocent remarks
can produce).

However, if you (un-bravely but also understandably) want to avoid attracting
the attention of the Pronoun Gestapo, it is permissible to substitute a 
suitably Biblical term like "creature" for "man".
-- 
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu