More Mindboggling Stupidity from Jerry Pournelle
en font terrible
of a program that has a known but unfixable bug, the chances are very large
that it was written in C."
-- Jerry Pournelle, January 1992 Byte.
Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
with his fatuous observation, would it?
mathew
--
Just another would-be Mac owner put off by Apple's monopolistic practices / If
you know where I can buy the CD "In Mysterious Ways" by John Foxx, please send
me email / Message for Kodak: Bring back Dan Bredy! / My PGP RSA public key is
available on request / Desperately seeking CD of "U2" by Negativland / 4 lines
Joe Wright
: "Meanwhile, it's still the case in the world I live in that whenever I hear
: of a program that has a known but unfixable bug, the chances are very large
: that it was written in C."
: -- Jerry Pournelle, January 1992 Byte.
:
: Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
: just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
: with his fatuous observation, would it?
:
:
: mathew
I haven't read the article so I'll take your word for the context.
The phenomenon has nothing to do with C. A 'known bug' usually means
it works but not the way you want it to. 'Unfixable' means you can't
convince the author (or vendor) that it's a bug and that you are unable
to 'fix' it yourself. Life is tough. It's arguably a 'bug' that msdos
limits you to 640k. It's 'unfixable' for reasons that have to do with
marketing, not programming.
--
Joe Wright al...@Netcom.COM "If you want it wRight"
Alpha Systems Corp., 711 Chatsworth Pl., San Jose, CA 95128
(408) 297-5594 (voice) "If you want it wRight now!"
John A. Weeks III
> Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
> just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
> with his fatuous observation, would it?
So like what are people doing with all of those copies of Turbo Pascal,
QuickBasic, and MASM that have been sold over the years? I would be
surprised if more than 10% of all PC programs ever written have been
written in C.
-john-
--
=============================================================================
John A. Weeks III (612) 942-6969 jo...@newave.mn.org
NeWave Communications, Ltd. ...uunet!tcnet!newave!john
Not Al Crawford's American Cousin
>So like what are people doing with all of those copies of Turbo Pascal,
>QuickBasic, and MASM that have been sold over the years? I would be
Farting around writing teeny programs, thinking that they are
Real Programmers.
>surprised if more than 10% of all PC programs ever written have been
>written in C.
Ever try to write a large [commercial-sized] program in Pascal? How about
Assembler or BASIC? Ever try to maintain it?
Thought not.
--
real address: ba...@catnip.berkeley.ca.us
last choice: lll-winken!catnip.berkeley.ca.us!bandy
When the British countryside was a trifle less civilized than it is
today, a certain amount of sheep-rustling was carried out, particularly
in the Border regions of Scotland and England. The rustlers were
called "reivers" and, of course, a sheep dog was very useful on these
outings. The Border Collie is noted for its silent method of working,
and it would seem likely that the markings which appear on so many of
today's dogs were a great help, as they broke up the outline of the dog
in the dark and made it less obvious to anyone who might be around.
Fortunately, things are now much more civilized, and although there are
still many Border Collies in the Border area, they are doing an honest
day's work with the sheep.
JHenderson
--"Meanwhile, it's still the case in the world I live in that whenever I hear
-- of a program that has a known but unfixable bug, the chances are very large
-- that it was written in C."
-- -- Jerry Pournelle, January 1992 Byte.
--
--Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
--just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
--with his fatuous observation, would it?
Mind-boggling stupidity from Pournelle? Gosh! You amaze me! Is the Pope still
Catholic? What, exactly, would you expect from Mr. Pea-brain? Every word he writes
is mind-bogglingly stupid, including "the" and "and".
--
-jeremy henderson | A sheepdog is a sheepdog,
egp...@uk.ac.ed.castle | Of course, of course
Lieutenant 030
> > Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
> > just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
> > with his fatuous observation, would it?
>
> So like what are people doing with all of those copies of Turbo Pascal,
> QuickBasic, and MASM that have been sold over the years? I would be
> surprised if more than 10% of all PC programs ever written have been
> written in C.
Because naturally "PC" means "100% IBM PC compatible computer", not "Personal
Computer". How silly of me.
And I should have said "just about every PC program which is worth spending
modem time downloading". That would have eliminated 90% of the ones written
in BASIC.
Dan Ellison
>In <XZ0oeB...@mantis.co.uk> mat...@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible) writes:
>> Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
>> just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
>> with his fatuous observation, would it?
>So like what are people doing with all of those copies of Turbo Pascal,
>QuickBasic, and MASM that have been sold over the years? I would be
>surprised if more than 10% of all PC programs ever written have been
>written in C.
Well, lets try: Turbo Pascal = learning to program (isn't this what
pascal was originally developed for?), QuickBasic - has it's place I guess.
I even use BBX2 on occasion myself. MASM? Well I guess there are still
some time critical applications that need to be written in assembly
language - probably just creating fast and tailored modules for inclusion
in a C program!!! 10%, I bet you would be surprised.... I think Mr.
Pournelle rather stepped on it with this comment, probably not the
first or last time that a journalist will do that though.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Dan Ellison, Network Admin - Molecular Science Program SIU-C |
| Southern Illinois University - Carbondale, IL 62901 |
| FAX: (618) 453-3459 - PHONE: (618) 453-7310 |
Kaleb Keithley
>"Meanwhile, it's still the case in the world I live in that whenever I hear
> of a program that has a known but unfixable bug, the chances are very large
> that it was written in C."
> -- Jerry Pournelle, January 1992 Byte.
>
>Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
>just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
>with his fatuous observation, would it?
>
Every PC program is written in C? Somehow I don't think so. But that's
beside the point. Obviously Jerry Pournelle has written so much fiction
that now he cannot tell the difference between fiction and fact. :-)
--
Kaleb Keithley ka...@thyme.jpl.nasa.gov
Not authorized, in any way, shape, or form, to speak for anyone.
robert dixon
>In article <XZ0oeB...@mantis.co.uk> mat...@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible) writes:
>>"Meanwhile, it's still the case in the world I live in that whenever I hear
>> of a program that has a known but unfixable bug, the chances are very large
>> that it was written in C."
>> -- Jerry Pournelle, January 1992 Byte.
>>
>
>beside the point. Obviously Jerry Pournelle has written so much fiction
>that now he cannot tell the difference between fiction and fact. :-)
>
I usually enjoy Jerry Pournelle's column, but remember that we're
dealing with someone who used an old CPM machine as his main computer
until a few years ago, and who made the statement that he "just didn't
feel secure until his data was backed up to 8" diskette." Obviously
someone who holds his pet peeves and biases dear to his heart . . .
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Dixon "My opinions may not necessarily
Low-Life Grad Student, be my own . . ."
Naval Postgraduate School,
Monterey, CA rdi...@cs.nps.navy.mil
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Khaw
> I usually enjoy Jerry Pournelle's column, but remember that we're
>dealing with someone who used an old CPM machine as his main computer
>until a few years ago, and who made the statement that he "just didn't
>feel secure until his data was backed up to 8" diskette." Obviously
>someone who holds his pet peeves and biases dear to his heart . . .
Yeah, the same guy who said that he couldn't see what all the fuss about
object-oriented programming was, because obviously anything you could do
with an O-O language he could do in BASIC -- conveniently ignoring the
fact that anything he could do in BASIC he could do in machine language,
not that he would want to, which is the point.
--
Michael Khaw - Domain=kh...@parcplace.com, UUCP=...!uunet!parcplace!khaw
ParcPlace Systems, Inc., 1550 Plymouth St., Mountain View, CA 94043
David F. Skoll
[About Jerry Pournelle:]
>Yeah, the same guy who said that he couldn't see what all the fuss about
>object-oriented programming was, because obviously anything you could do
>with an O-O language he could do in BASIC -- conveniently ignoring the
>fact that anything he could do in BASIC he could do in machine language,
>not that he would want to, which is the point.
Remember, his column is entitled "Users' Column", not "Programmers'
Column." (Of course, I sometimes wonder exactly what substance it is
that he "uses.")
Actually, his column illustrates the general decline of Byte from a
fairly decent magazine to a PC "Users'" rag filled with product
reviews, ads, and very little substance.
--
David F. Skoll
Ralph Becker-Szendy
writes (about Jerry Pournelle's latest sniplet of wisdom) (edited):
> I usually enjoy Jerry Pournelle's column, but remember that we're
>dealing with someone who used an old CPM machine as his main computer
>until a few years ago, and who made the statement that he "just didn't
>feel secure until his data was backed up to 8" diskette." Obviously
>someone who holds his pet peeves and biases dear to his heart . . .
Now hold it. A cp/m machine can be a perfectly useful beast, in
particular if all you use it for is word processing and modem file
transfer. In fact, it could easily be claimed that for limited use
(no large disk space or such), even today it is MORE useful than a
MS-DOS machine (don't have to worry about windows, about drivers,
about all of that). So if Mr. Pournelle wants to use his dinosaur for
a few more years while everybody else is off into "progress" (and I
don't really see MS-DOS or PC-clones as progress), that's fine with
me.
Furthermore, 8" SS SD diskettes are amazingly reliable. The bits are
SOO big, it is hard to miss them (or loose them). In particular in the
early days of 5.25 and 3.5" disks, reliability of the smaller disks
was poor; remember when Mitsubishi brought out the first 5.25" drives
which could emulate a 8" DSDD drive (something known as AT-mode
today), and they wouldn't work with just about any media ???
Note: Before you start a flame-fest: I agree that the original
statement (about 90% of all bugs are found in C-coded programs) is
VERY stupid. And that Pournelle's column is getting VERY VERY stupid
over time. And that the same is true for Byte as a whole (a completely
useless advertising magazine, where even the articles show who pays
their advertising dollars).
--
Ralph Becker-Szendy RA...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center RA...@SLACVM.BITNET
M.S. 95, P.O. Box 4349, Stanford, CA 94309 (415)926-2701
My opinion. This is not SLAC, Stanford U, or the US DoE speaking. Just me.
Dik T. Winter
> someone who used an old CPM machine as his main computer
> until a few years ago, and who made the statement that he "just didn't
> feel secure until his data was backed up to 8" diskette."
not backup, but the only source. A lot can go wrong with that. I learned
never to rely on backups, so I never make them. The institutes operators
make them, occasionally. Even though we have exabytes and what not, the
only time recently that I wished to use a backup it was unreadable.
And I still cling to the 2400 ft. reel tapes. But they are not reliable.
Moral: never feel secure.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland
d...@cwi.nl
Ronald Daggett
> In article <XZ0oeB...@mantis.co.uk> mat...@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible)
> >"Meanwhile, it's still the case in the world I live in that whenever I hear
> > of a program that has a known but unfixable bug, the chances are very large
> > that it was written in C."
> > -- Jerry Pournelle, January 1992 Byte.
> >
> >Gosh, the razor-sharp mind of Mr Pournelle strikes again. The fact that
> >just about every PC program is written in C wouldn't have anything to do
> >with his fatuous observation, would it?
> >
>
> Every PC program is written in C? Somehow I don't think so. But that's
> beside the point. Obviously Jerry Pournelle has written so much fiction
> that now he cannot tell the difference between fiction and fact. :-)
> --
> Kaleb Keithley ka...@thyme.jpl.nasa.gov
-----
What is a known but unfixable bug? Just follow IBM's lead and call an
"undocumented feature".
r...@ceidude.UUCP
"Answering Questions, and Questioning Answers! The American Way!"
Drevik, Steve
Or follow Borland's lead and tell the user "it must be caused by
some TSR in your system, or some environment variable."
-Steve "still waiting for an update for by Borland bugs" Drevik
Dave Munroe
>In article <41...@ac1.cs.nps.navy.mil> rdi...@cs.nps.navy.mil (robert dixon) writes:
> > someone who used an old CPM machine as his main computer
> > until a few years ago, and who made the statement that he "just didn't
> > feel secure until his data was backed up to 8" diskette."
>Of course. When I started my main backup medium was papertape. Actually
>not backup, but the only source.
Paper tape! Och, you were lucky, you were! We would'a killed for a bit
o' paper tape. All we had was a mercury delay line and a leaky one to boot!
-Dave
Rick Gordon
Luxury.
We had to boot with a Signal Corps Morse key attached to a handwound
Tesla coil. A leaky mercury delay line would have been heaven.
ObPeeve: Obviosity in my own post. Claudio'll get me for this.
--
Rick Gordon | "The more things change, the more different
ri...@netcom.com | they get." -- S. Krishna of Copenhagen
Nosy
Luxury.
We used mechanical relays for all computations and
our "backup" consisted of noting the settings of
ALL the relays.....
ObPeeve: oneupmanship.
Gordon Burditt
>statement (about 90% of all bugs are found in C-coded programs) is
>VERY stupid. And that Pournelle's column is getting VERY VERY stupid
I believe the original statement was that 90% of all bugs *THAT HE CAN'T FIX*
are found in C-coded programs. One interpretation of this is that
(presumably commercial) C programs are rarely distributed with *SOURCE CODE*,
unlike interpretive BASIC or shell scripts. (Some BASIC interpreters had
ways of accepting tokenized programs and refusing to list them. This
could generally be fixed by patching either the interpreter or the
program, and such patches became well-known).
Gordon L. Burditt
sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon
Dik T. Winter
> Would you believe (binary) punch cards as a backup medium.
>
No. Only for write-only backups. Ever tried to read a large number of
binary cards in one run?
Dave Andrews
>
>Actually, his column illustrates the general decline of Byte from a
>fairly decent magazine to a PC "Users'" rag filled with product
>reviews, ads, and very little substance.
(Yes, this is getting a little off-topic)
I dumped Byte when MGH dumped Ciarcia. I've never regretted it.
- David Andrews
dand...@bilver.UUCP
robert dixon
>Now hold it. A cp/m machine can be a perfectly useful beast, in
>
>Furthermore, 8" SS SD diskettes are amazingly reliable. The bits are
>SOO big, it is hard to miss them (or loose them). In particular in the
My point was that Jerry Pournelle is not necessarily objective about
his computing preferences. After going on and on about how much better
his CP/M machine was, he got a DOS machine and was immediately into
DOS machines in a BIG way, donating his prized CP/M machine to the
Smithsonian. Strangely enough, he never talks about
backing up to 8" diskettes either. His favorite solution is WORM
drives.
If he thinks C programs cause bugs, he should look at Basic a little
more closely. When I program in Basic, I'm constantly misspelling
variable names, for which the compiler happily creates a new variable
initialized to zero. Talk about a hard to find bug . . . at least a C
program with a wild pointer will politely crash to let you know
there's a little problem . . .
And, no, I'm not slamming Basic, either. The presence or absence of
bugs in a program probably has more to do with the style of the
programmer than with the language.
Dave Munroe
>I dumped Byte when MGH dumped Ciarcia. I've never regretted it.
Ciarcia was dumped? I thought the decision to leave was his -- that he
was forming his own magazine (and I agreed with his reasons).
-Dave
Sean Batt
>
>Actually, his column illustrates the general decline of Byte from a
>fairly decent magazine to a PC "Users'" rag filled with product
>reviews, ads, and very little substance.
I can almost cry when I see what Byte has become. My collection goes
all the way back to '77 with one from '76; and I was only 12 when I
bought my first copy. I'd read it from cover to cover, incuding the
adds for ultra high tech S-100 16k ram cards from North Star, Cromemco
systems with up to 1MByte of disc (4 8" floppies :-), the beautiful
blue Sol from Processor Technology, and those awesome LSI-11 machines
from Heathkit.
Do you remember when wire-wrap was the way to customise a system; the
"big four" processor chips were the 8080, 6800, 6502 and Z-80; the
futuristic Hazeltine Modular 1 terminal was modular by virtue of
having a removable keyboard; and 12 bit microprocessors deserved
serious thought?
Can anyone remind me when in the early 80s Byte published a quiz where
you had to identify 12 processor boards? Being such a faithful reader
I think I managed 11. How many people these days could identify the
peocessor boards they're using now?
In "How to Choose a Microprocessor" by Lou Frenzel, July 1978 Byte it
was necessary to utter the following words:
"Popularity
It may seem almost ludicrous to include such a general and
seemingly meaningless criterion for selecting a microprocessor as
popularity. Yet this rather inexact factor is important. Most
people tend to want to go along with the crowd. They want to
select devices that are well known and widely used by others. ...
This is why Chevrolet sells more cars than any other US
manufacturer."
because
"The choice of microprocessor is largely emotional. Even though a
device may not have the benefits of software availability, speed
and computing power, the device may be highly regarded."
(They knew! Back in '78 they forsaw the rise of the 8088! :-)
IMHO the demise of Byte was marked by Steve Ciarcia described how to
build an IBM PC compatable computer, moving away from real hacker
projects like home security systems and keyboard decoders.
Does anyone know offhand when the last construction article was
featured in Byte? I think I'll make a bonfire with all my copies after
that date, probably with an effigy of an IBM PC on top.
I still feel personally betrayed by Byte and their pandering to the
unwashed PC- and Mac-using swine who wouldn't know which end of a
soldering iron was the hot one.
Where can I read about converting your CGA monitor to an EGA capable
one? Which magazines have rushed in to fill the void? I have a burning
desire to reclaim my hacking youth...
Sean
--
------------- Sean Sebastian Batt - se...@coombs.anu.edu.au --------
-------- Coombs Computing Section - Telephone: +61 6 249 3296 -----
-- Australian National University - GPO Box 4 Canberra City 2601 --
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig R. Nelson
have copies from the early 80's when IBM PCs housing the 8086 and 5-1/4
inch disks were solid advancement. I recently picked up a copy on a
news stand and was shocked. Somewhere in the black void of ads I'm sure
there's an article or two. I just wish reading it was worth the time
it takes to find it. sigh..
Now I read DR Dobb. Still too many adds, but the content makes it worth
both the find-time and the purchase price.
=============================================================
| Craig Nelson , OO Programmer mwi...@eecs.cs.pdx.edu |
| CC Software, Inc. Beaverton Oregon 97005 |
=============================================================
Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
Ha!
I dumped Byte when they brought Pournelle on board.
I dumped Kilobaud when they dropped Kilobaud from their
name.
--
real address: ba...@catnip.berkeley.ca.us
last choice: lll-winken!catnip.berkeley.ca.us!bandy
"A man is a man all of his life/But a woman is sexy until she's your wife."
-- Al Bundy 2/9/92 Coming soon: Sheepdog.jpg
Dave Andrews
Hmmm. News to me, but I didn't ask him. Apologies to MGH persons,
if such are offended, and apologies are warranted.
Byte is STILL a mere shadow of its former self, IMNSHO.
- David Andrews
dand...@bilver.UUCP
Bernd Felsche
ra...@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Becker-Szendy) writes:
>Note: Before you start a flame-fest: I agree that the original
>statement (about 90% of all bugs are found in C-coded programs) is
>VERY stupid. And that Pournelle's column is getting VERY VERY stupid
>over time. And that the same is true for Byte as a whole (a completely
>useless advertising magazine, where even the articles show who pays
>their advertising dollars).
[ pedant alert ]
Well, at least one can find bugs in C-code. Saying that 90%
of all bugs are found in C-coded programs can be taken to
mean that there's only a 10% rate of not finding a bug in
the programs. I wish people wouldn't be so damned ambiguous.
--
+-----+ Bernd Felsche _--_|\ #include <std/disclaimer.h>
| | | | MetaPro Systems Pty Ltd / \ ber...@metapro.DIALix.oz.au
| | | | 328 Albany Highway, X_.--._/ Fax: +61 9 472 3337
|m|p|s| Victoria Park, Western Australia 6100 v Phone: +61 9 362 9355
Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
>Does anyone know offhand when the last construction article was
>featured in Byte? I think I'll make a bonfire with all my copies after
>that date, probably with an effigy of an IBM PC on top.
Fuck using an effigy, use Genuine IBM!
Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
>Now I read DR Dobb. Still too many adds, but the content makes it worth
>both the find-time and the purchase price.
Poser.
DDJOCCAO went downhill when all the rest of them did, and it wasn't
that wonderful to start with, given all the FORTH articles ["Reimplement
your own incompatible version of the forth language!"].. of course
the source code was nice, when it was large software, even if it was
of limited value.
James Hague
>mwi...@rigel.cs.pdx.edu (Craig R. Nelson) writes:
>
>>Now I read DR Dobb. Still too many adds, but the content makes it worth
>>both the find-time and the purchase price.
>
>Poser.
>
>DDJOCCAO went downhill when all the rest of them did, and it wasn't
>that wonderful to start with, given all the FORTH articles ["Reimplement
>your own incompatible version of the forth language!"].. of course
>the source code was nice, when it was large software, even if it was
>of limited value.
Dr. Dobb's is the magazine for people who don't own any good
reference texts. A high percentage of the articles they print
are just rehashes and watered down versions of undergraduate
computer science topics. As for the rest of the articles, rarely
is there anything which is non-obvious; they are all things I
could have easily come up with had I been faced with a similar
problem. They cater to people who can't code an algorithm,
given a detailed explanation and pseudocode.
The columns by Abrash and Duntemann are good, but are basically
lessons in programming the PC. Buying a couple of decent books
would be a much better investment. (If you've read _Zen of
Assembly Language_ and an EGA/VGA programming book, then doing
high speed animation is no big mystery)
--
James Hague
exu...@exu.ericsson.se
Malcolm L. Carlock
>In article <41...@ac1.cs.nps.navy.mil> rdi...@cs.nps.navy.mil (robert dixon)
>
>particular if all you use it for is word processing and modem file
>transfer.
Huh? The Kaypro CP/M machine I used had none of the serial-port UART
interrupts connected, so that any serial I/O was perforce polled. This
resulted in not being able to do serial communications at speeds faster
than 1200 bps. Other CP/M machines may have been different. I didn't find
this limitation to be a particularly "useful" feature of my own machine.
>In fact, it could easily be claimed that for limited use
>(no large disk space or such), even today it is MORE useful than a
>MS-DOS machine (don't have to worry about windows, about drivers,
>about all of that).
Indeed. And with a teletype and paper tape, I wouldn't have to worry
about my CRT phosphors wearing out, or magnetic fields accidentally
erasing my storage media, or not being able to find files on a large
filesystem, etc. That this is more "useful" than a CRT-based system,
or whether CP/M is more "useful" than MS-DOS simply by virtue of CP/M's
simplemindedness, is, I think, a questionable conclusion.
Followups to alt.religion.computers.
ObNonComputerPeeve: We need more whiteboards around here.
--
Malcolm L. Carlock Internet: ma...@unr.edu
UUCP: unr!malc
BITNET: malc@equinox