It's not enough to know the language; if the programmer doesn't include the necessary comments to provide context then you're in trouble.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Bernd Oppolzer <bernd.oppol...@t-online.de> Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2019 3:50 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Unreadable code (Was: Concurrent Server Task Dispatch issue multitasking issue) Very nice. I once got a task to rewrite or migrate some programs which originated in Poland; they were full of polish variable names. This was very hard because I had no idea what that variables meant ... I remember KONIEC, which, IIRC, means end-of-file :-) after a week or so, I understood at least some polish words, the word for counter etc. (which I forgot). This first gave me an idea how important natural language is for the understanding of source code (even if there are no comments). Kind regards Bernd Am 08.01.2019 um 21:19 schrieb Tony Thigpen: > FYI, I also put REXX into that category if someone tries to be > 'fancy'. And I use REXX a lot. > > I remember a programmer, back in '81, that was told that he could no > longer use RPG, but must use COBOL. He was upset so started using > Spanish variable names. This was not California, but was North > Alabama, where few spoke it. (Yes, management did catch him after a > month or so.) > > Tony Thigpen > > Pew, Curtis G wrote on 1/8/19 3:05 PM: >> On Jan 8, 2019, at 2:03 PM, Tony Thigpen <t...@vse2pdf.com> wrote: >>> >>> "C is the first write-once, read-never language." >>> >> >> Not even close; APL was around nearly a decade before C. >> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
