Exactly right.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Sunday, August 22, 2021, 4:04 PM, Gerhard Adam <[email protected]> wrote: It simply seems that most of the comments demonstrate that most posters have no idea what they are doing. (1) Programs are not complex, problems are. If the program is complex and the problem is not, then you don't know what you are doing. (2) Programming is not intended to show how smart or clever an individual is. It should be written to provide the most straightforward solution to others that may need to support it in the future. (3) Most problems are not solved by singular programs, but may involve having multiple modules. If the claim is that this is written in one attempt, without errors, then it is either a lie or dumb luck. (4) If the claim is that programs are written without errors, then the claim is that the programs do not need to be tested. This is clearly a lie. The individual is basing their code on luck and not skill. The question is not whether there were any errors, but whether the author INTRENDED for this code to be error free or whether it was a matter of luck It seems that many of the comments are either taking credit for being lucky or they don't know what they are doing. Often the nation of an error is also discussed in an amateurish fashion. Are we talking about syntax mistakes? Any claim that these don't occur are simply fantasy. Are we talking about logic errors? As mentioned, what does "working right" even mean? It seems that this is a nonsensical discussion. Adam P.S. what kind of foolishness suggests that z/OS is the product of a weekend? Decades of coding, analysis, feedback, and error correction went into it. And yet someone posts this as being concocted by a set of developers are if this were simply discussed over the scribblings on a bar napkin. There is only ONE language and that is the machine language used by the hardware to process directions. Everything else is merely a human translation of that so stop pretending as if this were some great human skill. It is merely a vocation that changes with the next compiler that is made available. One can easily see that after decades of computing, we still don't know how to produce a secure system. We still can't produce code that doesn't crash and we still can't even ensure that we release memory that was acquired by programs. Instead of people being so clever, they might concentrate on producing code that is reliable and actually works in all environments. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bob Bridges Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2021 12:40 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Programs that work right the first time. Bill, I don't understand what could have pushed your buttons. For instance: BJ> Comparing a 40 line REXX/CLIST “program” to a 10,000 line IMS/COBOL program that scans a parts database is an absolute joke. But the only one making that comparison is you. (Maybe that's why you were the only one laughing :). ) Maybe this is the key: BJ> No bee in my bonnet. Just don’t like braggarts. A few of us (including me) posted "I once wrote a 30-line program that worked right the first time", and what you heard is "am I not amazing, wonderful, brilliant? Do you not all admire me?" Is that what happened? --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty "just adding water." Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better. -Erma Bombeck */ --- On 2021-08-21 21:51, Bill Johnson wrote: > “Programming” in REXX, CLIST, and similar types of languages is hardly > programming. Real programming is hundreds or thousands of lines of COBOL, > with IMS, DB2, or CICS calls. I was pretty damn good too. Started off in > COBOL/IMS 4 decades ago. Did a little bit of COBOL/CICS and quite a bit of > COBOL/DB2 later. Try putting together the necessary code to drill down a > hierarchical database like IMS. > > --- On Saturday, August 21, 2021, 9:31 PM, Bob Bridges > <[email protected]> wrote: > This part of the thread got me thinking. How often do you write a program > that works right the first time, with no compile or execution errors? I'm > not talking about two-liners, of course, or even ten-liners; let's say 30 or > thereabouts. Please specify the language, too, since it seems to me they > vary in error-prone-ness. > > I've done it occasionally, but by "occasionally" I mean "less than one time > in twenty"; maybe much less, I'm not sure, and only once in my life when > anyone was watching. That was in PL/C; mostly nowadays I write in REXX and > VBA. > > In fact my REXXes typically start out with at least ten or fifteen lines of > boilerplate, and any VBA/Excel program likely relies on a raft of common > functions and/or objects that are part of my regular library, so when I say > "30 lines", some of those lines don't really count. > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of Tom Brennan > Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2021 13:41 > > ....one of my other supervisors/teachers would tell me about her application > experience. She said no matter how complex her COBOL programs were, they > would not only compile first time but would run perfectly. This of course > was due to her rigorous desk-checking which I assume took days. > > I remember thinking "that's crazy" but I just kept quiet. I'll give her a > break because that could have been at the time of card punching where such > desk-checking made far more sense. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
