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From: Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN-like languages
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 14:19:50 -0700
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 30/09/2024 18:01, John Ames wrote:
>> On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 07:22:45 +0100
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> 
>>> I think the worst thing was Turbo Pascal, which convinced huge
>>> numbers of amateurs that they could actually write code.
>> 
>> OTOH, like BASIC, it *enabled* large numbers of amateurs to actually get
>> shit done and develop software that met their own needs when solutions
>> were either nonexistent or prohibitively expensive - the kind of thing
>> that drove the microcomputer revolution. Sure, it might've made for a
>> little mess along the way, but in the long run it's not so terrible ;)
>> 
> The problem is that many of those amateurs thought they were in fact 
> professionals
> 
> And you could hack code *without regard to its context*
> 
> Sure I hacked a little basic, but once I started on assembler and C, my 
> engineering training kicked in and it was all documented, sometimes 
> planned and really quite structured.
> "Every code block in assembler must have an explanation of its purpose 
> that will likely be three times the length of the code."..was the 
> mantra. Even today writing code that no one but me will see I have 
> extensive headers for every function or code block explaining what it is 
> supposed to do and often line by line comments.

Me too. If I have to work on someone else’s code, the first thing I do is
insert some comments.

> 
> And sometimes I write the comments first.
> 
> // open port
> 
> //set up event handler for asynch connection
> 
> //listen on port, and vector incoming data to handler
> 
> ...and so on
> 
> 
> 



-- 
Pete