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From: cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Cathy Johnston)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: C Community's Cavalier Attitude On Software Reliability
Summary: This one triggered an "idiot-alert signal"
Keywords: Unprofessional Irresponsible
Message-ID: <619@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 90 21:57:57 GMT
References: <8147@hubcap.clemson.edu> <00000NC@cdis-1.UUCP>
Reply-To: cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu.UUCP (Cathy Johnston)
Organization: U. Chicago Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 25

In article <00000NC@cdis-1.UUCP> tanner@cdis-1.UUCP (Dr. T. Andrews) writes:
[commenting on Bill Wolfe's complaint that units(1) is documented as only
 giving an approximate exchange rate...]
>
>Some of the things cited aren't amenable to change: do you really
>expect the currency conversion tables for units(1) to update
>themselves every morning from the currency tables in the paper?
>

Bill's complaint about units(1) is a whole lot sillier than that.  In very
fast markets, exchange rates change several times a second.  And what would
you like units(1) to use, Bill?  The price in Philadelphia?  London?
Tokyo?  Chicago?  Should it give the bid or the ask price?  Should it
use the spot quote, or maybe the price implied by the option synthetics?
How about the price from the futures markets adjusted for stochastic
interest rates?

I don't need the Wall Street Journal or the exchange rate ticker to tell
me that being a millionaire in Lira is no big deal and that "32 Swiss Francs
per kilogram" means that lamb chops in Zurich are very expensive.  Units(1)
is a simple little tool for getting a rough estimate, useful as far as it
goes, and *documented*as*just*that.  Calling it "evidence" that C programmers
are "unprofessional" and "irresponsible" is just, well, "dumb".

cathy