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Not AgainNot AgainPosted Apr 17, 2012 10:49 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)In reply to: Not Again by dvdeug Parent article: PHP: a fractal of bad design (fuzzy notepad)
How do you program if you can't get simple things like spelling and capitalization right in English? First, English spelling is sufficiently non-simple that a spellchecker can't save you from howlers. Second, a former (English!) co-worker of mine could design and write sane, coherent software despite being unable to reliably internalize the spelling of "receive".
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Not Again Posted Apr 17, 2012 14:34 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
If the compiler keeps telling you that you're wrong, eventually you'll step up and give it something it can work with, and then you'll always have the executable and a debugger. There isn't such a toolchain for English.
Not Again Posted Apr 17, 2012 16:18 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
I guess it depends on what you consider sane.
> Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. (Edsger Dijkstra)
Not Again Posted Apr 17, 2012 16:38 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
Yeah. Even Ritchie couldn't spell "create" right.
/me ducks
Not Again Posted Apr 17, 2012 22:34 UTC (Tue) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
I think that was Thompson, and I *think* he said that if he could change one thing about Unix, that would be it.
Not Again Posted Apr 18, 2012 12:50 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] I recall it was Ritchie, but I could be wrong. And yes, that's the quote I was thinking of.
Not Again Posted Apr 19, 2012 11:00 UTC (Thu) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
Although there seem to be several sources on the web attributing it to Ritchie (e.g .http://www.gobolinux.org/?page=doc/articles/clueless) Wikiquote attributes it to Thompson, citing Kernighan & Pike as the source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Thompson
My copy of TUPE is at home so I can't check it, but I'm inclined to believe Kernighan & Pike would have got it right.
How to get `receive' right Posted May 12, 2012 1:54 UTC (Sat) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] Back in the day, I was programming a custom multiplexer board for the HP 2100. Obviously I had to have a testbed that would cause it to transfer data in either direction. :-)Being lazy, most of its commands were single letters: `s' for send, `h' for halt, &c. But to get it to listen for incoming, I had to type in the entire word `receive' correctly. By the end of the week I had no further trouble remembering the spelling.
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