Re: Another article involving Ada on /.

[mark.lorenzen@ofir.dk (Mark Lorenzen)]

Stan Milam <stmilam@swbell.net> wrote in message news:<Cl4Ec.9698$3f2.9640@newssvr24.news.prodigy.com>...
> Mark Lorenzen wrote:
> > For me "hacker" is a derogatory term.
> >
> 
> Goodness, I cannot count the times in 20 years of programming I've been 
> given a leviathian of a program(s) with no documentation and told to 
> "fix it or else...."  That means hacking through thousands of lines of 
> code to figure out what is going on.  I have made a career of hacking 
> through broken code to figure out what the heck it did and fix it.  I'm 
> proud of the term "hacker," but I would be leery of the term "cracker."
> 
> Regards,
> Stan Milam.

Having been exposed to the harsh realities of corporate life for only
a little over 5 years, I can not say that I have participated in many
projects. I have, however, tried once to hack through thousands of
lines of code in order to figure out what happened in a program, and
it wasn't fun at all. It was exceptionally boring.

For me, engineering (that includes software engineering) is about
*construction* with sound engineering methods. I love formal methods
and applicative languages as I think they represent sound engineering
tools. Sadly nobody uses them - therefore I am also hacking, like more
or less everybody else in software "engineering".

I am still so young (*cough*) that I have a na�ve hope, that things
will be better as the trade matures. But then, has it matured during
the last 20 years?

Regards,
- Mark Lorenzen