more about idiomatic programming

[Howard Johnson]

<11457 at brl-tgr.ARPA>:
>>      Let's say I am a person whose programming experience consisted a few
>> high school and college courses in Basic & Pascal.  Ok, now let's say I
>> have a problem that I want solved by a programmer.  The programmer comes
>> back to me with a program which doesn't do quite what I wanted.  ...
>> I'm lost, the programmer doesn't know what's wrong, and we're stuck.
>>      However if the program said "stuff = stuff + 1" or even
>> "increment(stuff)", I could say "Aha! ..." ...

<68 at ucbcad.UUCP>:
>     You should either: (1) Hire programmers who do the right thing, or (2)
>Learn C. If there are nice features ...
>     Anyway, you should admit that you are fighting a losing battle -- C
>programmers write programs that should be understood by and only by other
>C programmers, and if you don't know C you have no business trying to
>understand it.

     Just when I lost interest in the "x = x + 1" brouhaha, another caustic
comment comes in and spoils the boredom.  "If you don't know C, you have
no business expecting to successfully debug someone else's C program until
you've done your homework."  (Translate: homework = read a book explaining C.)

     Now, if more C compilers would do a better job of code optimization ...