UNIX Remembered

William E. Davidsen Jr davidsen at steinmetz.ge.com
Tue Sep 27 05:22:06 AEST 1988


Nothing wrong with minimal error messages... I took a couse in
programming languages once in which we did four or five languages in 15
weeks. I knew all of them except COBOL, so I got credit for projects on
two at once by writing a BASIC compiler in FORTRAN for the CDC3300.

If the statement was not recognized the message was "not BASIC" and if
it was not formed correctly the message was "wrong".

I had a subtle error in an editor once, which resulted in a register
dump and a message to call me. No one did, they just retried. Finally I
changed the message to read "dog germs" and people called me regularly
to ask the it meant.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me



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