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: 103376,2cd0b8b65b7d84fb
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: fjh@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)
Subject: Re: Ada's Assembly Language Comments
Date: 1997/07/04
Message-ID: <5pj11i$364@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 254545762
References: <y8xisHAeZ5uzYwIm@clanchy.demon.co.uk> <33BBD7AC.286F@link.com>
Organization: Comp Sci, University of Melbourne
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-07-04T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Samuel Mize <smize@link.com> writes:

>>...The only justifications I have
>> heard seem rather spurious.  (For example: "a student once had
>> compilation problems when an open coment block went off the right hand
>> of the screen with an editor which had line wrapping turned off.")
>
>How about: Experienced professional programmers have accidentally
>commented out good code and accidentally left in bad code, causing
>system failures.  We're planning to build mission-critical and
>life-critical systems, so we want to eliminate that risk.

For further evidence that this happens even to experienced professional
programmers, here is an extract from /usr/include/sys/kern/queue.h
on the alpha-dec-osf3.2 system that I'm using.

	/*
	 *	Macro:		queue_init
	 *	Function:
	 *		Initialize the given queue.
	 *	Header:
	 *		void queue_init(q)
	 *			queue_t		q;	/* MODIFIED*/
	 */
	#define queue_init(q)	((q)->next = (q)->prev = q)

The only reason that this code compiles at all is that it is usually
#ifdef'd out.

--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.