On 2/3/2024 12:26 PM, Andreas Eder wrote:
> On Di 30 Jan 2024 at 11:45, bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 1/29/2024 7:50 PM, kludge@panix.com wrote:
>>> =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>> The code is VB6.
>>>>
>>>> But none of the problems are Basic specific. It is possible
>>>> to write the same bad code in C or Fortran or whatever.
>>>>
>>>> So it just shows that there are some really really bad programmers out
>>>> there.
>>> I have worked with people who could write spaghetti Fortran in any
>>> programming language available. Did you know that LISP has a goto?
>>> It does.
>>>
>>>> PS: Good compilers may have detected the unreachable code. But it
>>>> is still good vs bad compiler not good vs bad language.
>>> The exciting part is when they tell you not to remove the unreachable
>>> code,
>>> because the program crashes at runtime when you do that.
>>
>> Many moons ago I had to try to fix a number of programs that
>> crashed whenever run. Back in those days a common method was
>> to add statements to display variables during execution. I
>> had many cases where adding those statements made the program
>> work.
>>
>> bill
>
> So it was a Heisenbug :-)
>

Now, that's a very interesting way to look at it. :-)

bill

On Fri, 2 Feb 2024 07:38:14 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 2/1/2024 11:48 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 1 Feb 2024 22:11:20 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>
>>> But C# is all over. Finance, e-commerce, government etc..
>>
>> All that stuff that’s now in the cloud?
>
> A lot of it.
>
> But C# does not care if if the hardware it runs on is bought or rented.

Looks like Microsoft now wants to get rid of at least some of its own C#
code. It is looking for developers to convert it to Rust.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the future of C#/Dotnet, is it?

On Fri, 2 Feb 2024 08:44:00 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 2/1/2024 11:50 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 1 Feb 2024 21:49:56 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>
>>> The nested do while loop is a big mess.
>>
>> Looks like you are adding a whole lot more lines of code in the form of
>> jumps and places to jump to, and flags to control what to do when you
>> get there. Adding a bit of a combinatorial explosion in possible cases
>> that have to be verified somehow.
>
> I "added" lines so that the total number of lines "increased" from 7 to
> 6 in the one-level example and from 20 to 12 in the two-level example.

Fine. Now put it all together into a finished example, and show us how it
looks.

On Fri, 2 Feb 2024 07:56:33 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 2/1/2024 11:51 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Thu, 1 Feb 2024 22:44:56 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> To quote from Linux kernel coding style doc:
>>>
>>> <quote>
>>> Now, some people will claim that having 8-character indentations makes
>>> the code move too far to the right, and makes it hard to read on a
>>> 80-character terminal screen. The answer to that is that if you need
>>> more than 3 levels of indentation, you’re screwed anyway, and should
>>> fix your program.
>>
>> I think this is a load of nonsense.
>
> Apparently Linus doesn't think so.

I know he doesn’t.

> And while few may have worded is this blunt, then it is generally
> accepted that deep nesting is a code smell and should be refactored and
> code moved out to functions/methods.

I do deep nesting all the time. This one goes 8 levels deep.

(defun prev_less_indent (count)
"moves to the last prior line with a lesser indentation level."
(interactive "p")
(loop break
(back-to-indentation)
(let
(
(indent_end (point))
indent_amt
line_start
)
(beginning-of-line)
(cond
((> indent_end (point))
(setq indent_amt (- indent_end (point) 1))
(unless
(loop done
(when (= (point) (point-min))
(ding)
(done nil)
) ; when
(previous-logical-line)
(beginning-of-line)
(setq line_start (point))
(end-of-line)
(when (/= line_start (point)) ; skip over empty lines
(back-to-indentation)
(setq indent_end (point))
(beginning-of-line)
(when (< (- indent_end (point)) indent_amt)
(done t)
) ; when
) ; when
) ; loop
(break)
) ; unless
)
(t ; on line with no leading whitespace
(ding)
(break)
)
) ; cond
) ; let
(setq count (- count 1))
(when (<= count 0)
(break)
) ; when
) ; loop
(back-to-indentation)
) ; prev_less_indent

Feel free to show us how it should be “refactored and code moved out
to functions/methods”.

On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:27:57 -0500, Dave Froble wrote:

> Final cleanup, if required, and exit the program.

If the program is exiting, a lot of the leftover cleanup (e.g. memory
deallocation) becomes unnecessary.

> Knew a guy that would us a gosub to go to the END statement. Drove me
> nuts.

Did it have a comment next to it saying “I’ll be back!”?

On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 22:57:47 -0500, Dave Froble wrote:

> Cars are dangerous, should we go back to horses?

Fun fact: according to drug expert David Nutt, horse-riding is about as
dangerous as taking Ecstasy.

Do horses have seatbelts and crumple zones yet?