the "phone test" for programs

[Henry Spencer]

In article <19925 at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> bobmon at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
>I can't recall EVER wanting to communicate a program to someone orally,
>either over a phone (excuse me, fohn) or in person...

It can happen, but it's exceedingly rare.  I once wrote an archive unpacker
whose major virtue was that it was short enough to be read over the phone
to my girlfriend's customers.  (Why?  Back then, not all commercial suppliers
had upgraded their software to use V7 archive format -- some were still using
the old V6 one -- and this meant that some sites had trouble with distribution
tapes containing V7 archives.)

Talking about a fragment of a program over the phone is not uncommon.  But
then capitalization is seldom an issue.
-- 
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu