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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1c1a139977eee854 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-21 20:01:15 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Case statement and Integers. Date: 21 Apr 2002 20:01:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0204211901.383bc431@posting.google.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.244 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1019444475 26585 127.0.0.1 (22 Apr 2002 03:01:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2002 03:01:15 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22879 Date: 2002-04-22T03:01:15+00:00 List-Id: tmoran@acm.org wrote in message news: > Bicycling to Hawaii is original - but it won't work either. In > Software Engineering, the point is to make something that works, not > necessarily something original. In fact, since you will abandon most of > your code to your maintenance successors (one hopes you move on to new > things!), and originality will just confuse them, originality itself is a > downright *negative* aspect of code, to be used only when the negative is > outweighed by the positive benefits of the novel technique. Very nice post. Indeed, "originality considered harmful" would be a fun title for an extended article on the above theme. "cleverness considered harmful" would be an appropriate sequel :-)