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From: Jeffrey Carter <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com>
Subject: Re: short-circuit control forms
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Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Jeffrey Carter <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com> wrote in message news:<3B312260.728686B5@boeing.com>...
> > If not, you do not have software engineers. You have coders who are
> > wasting their time and the company's money on ignorant FUD, and
> > introducing a new source of error into working software. At best you
> > should fire them and replace them with software engineers; at worst you
> > should require them to adhere to your company standard unless they have
> > justification for deviating.
> 
> The above itself is FUD in this case.
> 
> It is quite obvious that in some cases short circuiting is critical
> for efficiency without needing detailed measurements. For example,
> when searching in a binary tree, it can make the difference between
> O(logN) and O(N) behavior in extreme cases (well in recursion cases
> it can of course make the difference between finite and infinite
> execution time in a non-lazy language).

It may well be true that short circuiting is necessary to obtain
acceptable run times when implementing a search in a binary tree, but
that seems to have no bearing on the subject under discussion. The post
that I was replying to described coders changing working Ada, which
implies that the software is already fast enough, because they believe
that short circuit forms are universally faster, without any evidence
that their beliefs are true. To change working software in a manner
known to be a potential source of errors without any evidence of
benefit, much less of necessary benefit, does not seem justifiable to
me.

I guess this means the above is FUD about FUD about FUD. Shall we try
for FUD ** 4?

Do your posts this afternoon represent situations you thought it very
important to comment on, or can we expect the pleasure of your posts on
a regular basis again?

-- 
Jeffrey Carter