Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan)]

In article <1999Nov23.092557.1@eisner>,
Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote:
>In article <Mjr_3.405$aj3.40078@news.wenet.net>, xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:

>I have too many years of editor scripting experience.

So do I, about 38  of them.  Just to keep things fresh, I'm not still
using the first one I learned, so there is always room to learn more.

>I have too few hours of available time.

Me to, but I trade that for the joy of being constantly exhausted by
too little sleep.

>I vote with Robert.

Always your choice.

>I prefer to read posts from those who know how to avoid HTML
>due to the considerably larger probability that they are not
>a waste of my time.

I work in an office in the real world.  If I were to discard all the
email I receive from people who probably don't even know that their
browser mail interface has turned on html duplicates of their code by
default, because they also don't ask (or know how to ask) for memo
copies of their own mail, my email box would be barren indeed.  Since
this is for the most part the email that keeps the company functioning,
I don't have the luxury of ignoring a financial analyst wizard's email
just because s/he is not also a browser usage wizard.

Now that we have an internal set of newsgroups, I have little hope
that these same inconveniences won't promptly translate themselves
from email to news.

I also belong to a mailing list for those suffering the same rare
cancer as my wife.  A good fraction of the the list participants are
WebTV access users, including the most useful medical abstracts
refrence provider in the group.  By the time I edit out all the garbage
these entirely non-technical and frankly otherwise distracted people
let their mailers put into their mail, I rarely have 20% of the
original message bulk left.  Funny, but their lack of skills with text
transmission have zip to do with the love, kindness, courtesy, courage,
and useful advice they interchange, and give freely to me and mine.
We are talking about people who get to commiserate about deaths in the
group at least monthly here, this is real life.

I really don't think you are giving life a fair chance to inform you if
you first insist that all your correspondents be experts in everything
you yourself have found useful to learn, nor do I think you are likely to
succeed if you let a prejudice against a correspondent's non-expertise
in any area which results in things that intensely inconvenience and
annoy you, blind you to the good chance that there is some part of life
where the correspondent has something to teach you that you would
desperately want to know, if only you could glimpse the meaning through
the ground clutter within which it is hiding.

    "If  I die my knowledge may die with me, & no one may ever have the
    same knowledge  again."  Letter  from  Alice  May  Williams  of
    Aukland, New Zealand, to the Mount Wilson Observatory, November
    7th, 1915.         -- http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/letters/alice.htm

>This is not very different than the bias
>I exercise to favor posts that demonstrate the ability to deal
>with spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mixed case.

Well, to me they are not even closely related, since spelling, grammar,
and punctuation are a mandatory part of everyones education, provided
by professional teachers, from the earliest years and for years
afterward.  Typically, the email use training that comes with a browser
looks like: "here's your computer, if you have any questions, ask
Jill".

I tend to have _very_ little patience for those raised in American
English who ignore all the rules of civilized typing, but I was
recently embarrassed in this prejudice as well. I found out that the
office genius on whose creations the whole organization stands or
falls, and on whom I was ranking for his poor writing, suffers from
both dyslexia and mildly from aphasia.

Despite both, he can type three times as fast as I can, a world class
rate, using techniques he has had to invent himself to overcome as best
possible his disabilities. He can put more useful and better considered
prose into his writing than I could ever hope to attain, what with my
involuntarily giving away about 50 IQ points to him.

I got to feel like a complete fool, and deservedly so, as I tried to
sink unnoticed into the carpet while slinking back to my cubicle.  I'm
frankly old, cranky, and inflexible, but I hope I am not too old to
have learned my lesson.

>Larry Kilgallen

Anyway, this has gone way off topic, so I'm marking followups to
"poster" if anyone feels a need for more of my undying (see below)
prose and prejudices on this subject.

              ===== focused archival quality quote =====

[...]  a  posting  rife  with  typos  is  not likely to get your ideas a
friendly reception.  Fair or not, your ideas are judged in large part by
the care you take presenting them.
                                                   -- xanthian, 7/1/1990
--
Kent Paul Dolan.
<xanthian@well.com> <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu> <xanthian@whistle.com>
Pretense of web presense [poorly hidden] at http://www.well.com/user/xanthian
(just dumps you into a directory: glitz minus).  [Even more poorly maintained.]