On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 08:11:24PM -0800, Mike Castle wrote: > Jeremy Nixon <jeremy@exit109.com> wrote: > >> The problem with trn is that the code is so antiquated and ugly that it's >> not easy to hack things into. It's missing a lot of stuff I'd like to > > It's actually used as the example for Spencer's and Collyer's paper > "#ifdefs Considered Harmful". I think that says quite a bit there. > > Fortunately, most programmers learn and get better. Sometimes their early > mistakes stay around for a LONG time, though. Yeah, compounded by the fact that, although I'm experienced in things like Perl (even for largish applications), I'm a novice at C, so my mistakes would simply compound the ones that are in there already. :) Plus, I know next to nothing about how to make C code really portable, so I'm hesitant to undertake anything significant even if I think I can do the job, because I figure I'd probably just do it wrong. > Whether perl is an improvement is a matter of debate. ;-> Although I make much of my living coding Perl, I wouldn't want trn redone in it. The thing with Perl is that you can never read anyone else's code (and I would never claim my code to be the exception). Good for job security, bad for distributed development. :) -Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See! http://www.vasoftware.com
