The software development process.

microsoft != standard

Chances are they won't work on the new OS from MS because of security concerns. You will only be allowed to run MS aproved applications to buy things from the MS web sites and write emails to the permitted recievers.

In message , dated Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Ken Smith writes

That would be really fun. You could call error handling with

#define OH, CALAMITY!

Well, the simulation part is easy, but adding GUIs will multiply the task severalfold, no matter what language you use. For quickie engineering apps, I use graphics displays but stick to simple character-oriented human interfaces... type "B" to set filter bandwidth sort of stuff.

PowerBasic Forms lets you design a real Microcrap type window and generates the os interface code for you, but it's always going to be the stupid async event-driven Windows junk to deal with.

John

What's wrong with GOTO, other than that some academic panned it some decades ago, and gave us the ultimate goto-free language, Pascal or something. Conditional GOTO is the ideal control structure for fast, flat, absolutely reliable state machines.

John

In message , dated Mon, 11 Sep 2006, John Larkin writes

My comment was about 'legions of GOTOs'. I agree that in itself GOTO is OK, but it has been seriously abused. The guilty party was wrongly identified. Free The GOTO One!

No comment.

John

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

--Brian Kernighan

That's why I like embedded stuff, where the the programming team size is one.

John

So far I've avoided getting involved with this thread, but....

In certain languages, one has to use GOTOs to implement closed control structures. It's not the GOTO per se that's evil, it's open control structures.

The following is ok:

if ( condition ) do something else do something else endif

Even if implemented with GOTOs. It's the fact that it's a closed structure that's the point.

Spaghetti code *is* evil. Point at a random line - how did you get there? If the answer is not simple, you're in deep trouble.

The classic treatise on the subject is "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" by Dijkstra; he was far from just "some academic":

Steve

if a device has four buttons which one turns it on? usually the one that says "on"

if yopu have a program with a number of functions where do you start?, by definition "main".

If you write your own startup code you can call it anything you like.

-Lasse

I recall a guy who defined C into Pascal because he liked Pascal better. Perhaps I could do the same for Algol 68, my first language.

In message , dated Mon, 11 Sep 2006, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org writes

If the programs started with 'Start' (or even '$Start'), I wouldn't have any grounds for asking the question, would I?

That's rather the point I was trying to make.

Do you mean that you've never used GOTO Zero? I used that a lot on the old Commodore 64 computers if I had to return to the start of a program from more than one place. That way all you had to do was put GOTO on the line and you saved a couple bytes. I also used small line numbers to save space.

The Commodore 128 was even better. It had a renumber command that let you specify the range, start point, and increment so you could spread out the program, then shrink a section to add more code.

"Ken Smith" skrev i en meddelelse news:edrshq$jdv$ snipped-for-privacy@blue.rahul.net...

LOL - whenever possible one must also add the software onto the critical path of the entire product line the better to draw a path of destruction through several related projects. In the interest of "economy" and "reuse, of course.

I remember some of the early Commodore 64 "renumbers" that only renumbered the

I eventually ended up with a "Final Cartridge 3", which, I'd have to say, kicked ass (even if it did take them 3 tries to make it really, truly "final" :-) ). Besides the fastloader and the assembly language assembler/disassembler and program freezer and the many new BASIC commands, it renumbered programs correctly (both the lines and the gotos).

The first renumber program I ever used was the one on the Apple II that took over the wacky "&" (ampsersand) command that Steve & Steve had stuck in for just such utility programs to use.

Point at a random line of C++ code... how did you get there? First, untangle the compile-time nest of { and } things; then untangle the runtime calling sequence. Fun OO things and function overloading just add to the joy. Shouldn't involve more than 30 or 40 different files, if you're lucky.

Yup, he's the guy to blame.

"Dijkstra was known for his essays on programming; he was the first to make the claim that programming is so inherently difficult and complex that programmers need to harness every trick and abstraction possible in hopes of managing the complexity of it successfully."

and

"Dijkstra is also noted for never owning a computer and rarely using one."

from his bio on Wikipedia.

John

For some reason, the Windows versions of PowerBasic require that all subroutines be placed before PBMAIN, and PBMAIN is itself a formal subroutine. So a program doesn't start "at the beginning."

John

In message , dated Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Joel Kolstad writes

The BBC Micro handled calculated GOTO numbers and for GOSUB (IIRC) as well.

I'd forgotten that Basic had line numbers:-)

martin