Rejecting rejection

[demon at desire.wright.edu]

In article <27465:Oct3104:02:3590 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu>, brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> In article <1990Oct31.014132.2400 at agate.berkeley.edu> bks at alfa.berkeley.edu (Brad Sherman) writes:
>> I have included a program below which is broken by the Microsoft 6.0
>> compiler on MSDOS.   While this is no great surprise, the circumstances
>> that break the code have caused some concern in our shop.
>   [ ``register'' breaks the compiler ]
> 
> On behalf of the comp.lang.misc crew, I regret to inform you that we
> must disregard your article on the grounds that the situation you
> describe is completely impossible.
	I am pleased to reject your article on behalf of the entire planet
earth.  The statements you make are completely ludicrous.

> 
> Compilers no longer have bugs. Optimizers, in particular, are fully
			      ^hey!  where's the smiley?  Surely you jest!

	I recently reported a _Compiler bug_ to DEC.  Their compiler choked
when encountering more that two ill defined enum's.
	
> capable of transforming programs by techniques as reliable as those
> described by Dijkstra in his classic book on software design.
> 
> Microsoft is a large, respected company that hires the latest crop of
		I agree with large...the rest however...
:)

> yuckies directly from the top computer science departments in the
> country. It uses software engineering methods that have been proven
> correct by their automated program correctness verifier. If you are
> seeing unreliable results in your program, either the hardware has a
> fault or quantum effects are taking hold. Your computer may soon undergo
> spontaneous internal combustion.
> 
> ``Software engineering'' was coined on January 17, 1985, the same day
> that the last optimizer bug was reported. For more than half a decade,
> optimizers have been absolutely perfect. They are always worth the time
> they take, because they produce incredible speedups with no risk of
> program failure. It seems safe to say that hand optimization died the
> day that software engineering was invented.
> 
> Have a nice day.
> 
> ---Dan

	This must have been a Halloween posting...that's the only answer!

Brett