🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2336@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

>I do not believe that even a 100 line program should be produced by one
>person.  Anyone can miss too much.

Do you really believe that programming by committee is better?  I feel
that code should be REVIEWED and INSPECTED by someone other than the
original author, but I have enough faith in my fellow colleagues to be
able to produce 100 line programs reasonably well.  Also, do you
practice what you preach?  Is all of your code written by a group of
people instead of just yourself?

>I have no difficulty with spaghetti code when I need it,

Are you the one who maintains the code that you write?  When your code
is moved to another machine/architecture/compiler, do you do the port,
and if so, how quickly?  There is already too much code out there which
can't be changed because everyone is afraid that undocumented side
effects were taken advantage of, and no one is quite sure how much
other code will break if it is changed.

>If you have read what I have written, you would know that I do not believe
>a good HLL is possible.

Then stop complaining that we can't do the impossible!

>So, even if I had the resources (and they are very
>scarce for things like this in an academic environment), why should I try?

Exactly what resources do you need?  I wrote my first assembler during
my freshman year of college, and all I had was a 2400 baud ADM-5 terminal
connected to an overloaded (70+ users) VAX 11/780.  I still managed to
get it working in just a few short weeks, and I had four classes
and a job leaving me with precious little time to devote to the
project.  Plus it was the FIRST assignment in the course, NOT the LAST
one!  I can't believe that terminals and computers are scarce at
Purdue.

>With the present situation in which funding is almost
>entirely from the federal govennment, getting the necessary $30,000 or so
>to produce the versatile macro translator is next to impossible.

How could you even justify spending $30K on this project?  What makes
this project so much more complex than a typical assembler or even a
compiler?  Maybe the government won't fund you because it can't see the
value of the results of this project.

>It is
>almost impossible to get graduate students to assist on faculty statistics
>research projects.

Er, I thought that one of the things a grad student had to do was to
help faculty on their research projects.  Maybe the project just isn't
rewarding enough.
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