In article <61fssiF1ukgf3U2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Paul Russell <prussell@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> You really shouldn't rely on this kind of behaviour. Better to write
> robust code and take steps to ensure that you never overrun buffers.
Folks, please give me a break. This stuff is legacy software, written
over 30 years ago and changed only enough to ****t it to new machines.
In this case I did make that change and the code works properly
Although I graduated from Carnegie Tech (CMU) in 1964 with a degree in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the CS was primitive. In
fact, the university didn't even create an official CS department until
1965. I couldn't touch any of you who have graduated in the last few
years.
I started on a SouthWest Tecnical Products (Sweat-Pack) with 8"
floppies and a primitive DOS. 8K of RAM was more than enough for any
sensible person!
I was reading about Unix, taking some courses and getting very
enthusiastic when Altos came out with an M6800 computer running an
early version of Unix, if I remember correctly. This saved my the
expense of acquiring a DEC or Perkin-Elmer mini (remember those??).
This was sometime in the late 1970s.
The Altos had a C compiler and I started to write code to sup****t my
work in the investment business. The goal was to cobble together
something that worked, not to be particularly elegant. The early C
compilers were very lenient and you could get away with murder, which I
did. At least I created man pages for all my programs!
I went from there to an Altos 68020, running Unix System III. Then to
a NeXT and most recently to a PC running Uwin. Uwin uses ksh and its
C compiler is actually a front-end to Microsoft's C compiler.
Through all of this I was usually able simply to recompile the old
code for the new architecture, sometimes making a few changes.
Consequently, it hasn't changed much in over 30 years. C is a
remarkably robust language.
Since my business is managing money for people, not software design, I
have not moved ahead. I never learned C++ or ObjectiveC, because
everything I needed was already written in C. For the same reason, I
never learned Perl, Python, Ruby or any of the languages that have come
along since awk, which has always served my needs. The one concession
I have made is to pick up a smattering of ksh.
By most of your standards I am an old foggy living in the last
century. As a software engineer that is true, but that is not my
business. My business is to manage money and the computer just
sup****ts that task. I happen to like coding, which is why I ended up
doing it, but I always had to make that secondary to my primary role.
By your standards I am way out of my depth, which is why I turn to you
when I run into something I don't understand.
--
Robert B. Peirce, Venetia, PA 724-941-6883
bob AT peirce-family.com [Mac]
rbp AT cooksonpeirce.com [Office]
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