questions from using lint

[rab at well.UUCP]

[WHAT line ea


In a previous article, an anonymous person writes:
> 
> > You people fail to realize that some of us out here don't like lint.
> > It complains too much about what I do. I refuse to go any further
> > than generating no compiler warnings. I know what I'm doing. When I
> > goof, I'll fix it myself. I refuse to add extra casts to keep lint
> > happy.
> >
     Of course, an expert like yourself would not consider stooping to
making modifications to lint which match your programming preferences.
And, of course, since you're omnipotent (at least within your machine)
then there is no point in indirectly soliciting the impartial opinion
of another competent programmer: if there are any bugs, well by God you
put them there on purpose!

> > 
> > Before you start flaming my style, let me say I am quite good.
> > I am also quite philosophical and attentive to coding style.
> > My outlook is just different. I program for myself. If it is applicable
> > to you, fine. I have my own criteria which I rarely see embraced by
> > others waving standardization flags.
> > 
     And of course the desires of your employer to have a working product
that will remain usable even if you suffer an untimely death are completely
irrelevant to your criteria....  What the heck, if another person can't
figure out a few tens of thousands of lines of code without your help,
why they must not be a very good programmer!

> >
> > Most of the code I have written was intrinsically non-portable. I *do*
> > appreciate portability as a spectrum concept, but not as a binary one.
> > 
     Define 'spectrum' and 'binary' as used in this context.



Responding to the above (and more like it) Greg Paris writes:
>
> Sorry I enclosed so much of the original article above, but I found it
> so surprisingly bizzare, I just couldn't leave any of it out.  I have
> two things to say about it: 1) I'm glad that Mr. XYZZY doesn't work
> here; 2) I'd never recommend him being hired as a programmer, anywhere.
> -- 
> ++------------------------------------------------------------------++
> ||  Greg Paris    {allegra,linus,raybed2,ccice5,brunix}!rayssd!gmp  ||
> ++------------------------------------------------------------------++
> 

    I, for one, thoroughly agree with you.  Individual programming style
is one thing; complete contempt for rational coding practice is quite
another.


-- 
Robert Bickford     {lll-crg,hplabs}!well!rab