From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) Subject: Re: OO, C++, and something much better! Date: 1997/01/29 Message-ID: <5cnii3$r9q$1@news.nyu.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 213018379 references: <32edc09c.3000098@nntp.interaccess.com> organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel Date: 1997-01-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >I once had someone (who shall be nameless) working on the Ada Ed project >who said to me "there is no point in worrying about being one off in a loop, >you will find the error during testing anyway". Needless to say, this person >did not work long on the project! It is this kind of attutide that brings >you many of the high profile software screwups in this world! I think you've given a bad example. Off-by-one in a loop is often a situation where it will either not work at all or work correctly. It's also often the case that it'll take a good deal of time to be confident in the analysis of which is right. I agree that a programmer who cannot *do* the analysis or who doesn't understand why one might want to do that is not somebody I'd want to hire, but I don't see what's wrong with deciding that it's faster to take experimental approach and try both ways than to spend the time convincing oneself exactly which is correct. Of course, if the decision isn't framed in precisely that way, I agree with you. On the other hand, I do agree that if it's that hard to figure out which is correct, probably there's some unnecessary complexity elsewhere that needs to be removed.