OT: RIght

As an executable sure.

Far easier and smaller to make that executable in assembler.

OK, post your code.

John

Big projects have other problems related to communications in large teams and management failures. Creeping specifications or none being th emost common error. Senior management often pays only lip service to quality - they want it shipped now to get money in and maximise their bonuses. Many hardware makers see the software only as a cost of doing business and do the bare minimum needed to sell their hardware.

Sadly the weak point of C is actually its terse efficiency. The worst security defect in MS Windows comping from the canonical fast but dodgy pointer to string copy construct: while (*t++ = *s++);

These days software doesn't have to be brutally efficient except in a handful of very tight inner loops (graphics rendering for instance). Most of it would be much better off a bit slower and defensively range checked - at least in commercial business software.

I suspect it is slightly better than the industry average at about 1 in

2000 lines of code. It is just that there are a lot of lines.

That should tell you something about programming in the large.

This is a part of the problem. People think that a trivial one day project can be scaled to 100 man year projects. Managing a team of individual programmers with this attitude is like herding cats.

Hurrah! You are beginning to learn something about large software projects.

Regards, Martin Brown

On a sunny day (Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:59:52 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Yes, I have some specific ideas about 'large scale multi programmer projects' too. Especially in IT in big companies. Sort of a self propelling mass acquiring thing. When in the end 100 programmers (example) do the same thing that one good one could do if they just let him write code. On that subject you are right. I have been fortunate never to work in such a 'team'. But it would be silly to blame it only on the programmers, I think a French poster quite accurately described it (how that happens) here in the thread. MS window is an example. I cannot understand how that con scheme can keep getting so much money out of a

10 cent DVD filled with bloat. Their sales department is really good. It brainwashed most of the world. I have read that Russia has now mandated open source and Linux for the government and schools. They still have a clear view.

Beginning?

John