CompuServe Messages

Ben, you seem to have forgotten some important people – users of your products. Your users don't give a flying ***** whether you used C, ADA, forth, Modular-programming techniques, or a hammer and chisel to write your application. All they care about is what it does, and how well it runs. If tweaking an application w/ five or six lines of ILAC in the right place will make it perform better, why is that so evil? You've said that only amateurs use ILAC, and that professionals only use modular techniques. I say you're dead wrong. Professions write programs (er, make that 'professionals') which does what the user wants done, and does it well. A professional does what he has to do to make his code run as quickly and correctly as possible. I would say that a programmer who avoids 'evils' such as ILAC at all costs, despite the fact that they may improve program performance, is the true amateur, because he values his code's asthetics over his users. Some of the best selling software ever was written in the most heathen, unstructured, and ugly language of all – assembly langauge. Lotus 1-2-3 is a prime example. So is a huge number of game/simulation software packages. The code was ugly, but the users loved the products becasue they were fast and worked well. Now Lotus has re-written 1-2-3 in mostly C, and all their users are whining that its significantly slower than previous versions (even w/ smart recalc). Lotus gained code portability and modularity, but upset lots of its users. Which do you think matters more? -Mike