[Coco] Re: Thoughts about going back to school full time.

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 17 December 2005 11:54, farna at att.net wrote:
>If your boss is "hanging a carrot in front of you" to do more, then I
> would think they value you as an emplyee and want to keep you on.
> Otherwise they wouldn't offer you more -- status quo is good until
> you finally leave.
>
>I agree though. I'm 44 now, will be 45.5 when I finally retire after
> just over 24 years of military service. I'm not really looking for
> another "career", just something to keep me busy and some spending
> money coming in. Different circumstances since I'm not in the
> computer field professionally (construction, actually), but I plan
> on doing some things more along my interests, maybe taking a part
> time job to be able to pay for it. I do get a pension, so I'm not
> stranded like some of you would be. It doesn't hurt that I inherited
> a small house and some land I'm going back to either. The house
> needs extensive remodeling, but I'm planning on taking 3-6 months
> off and doing most of that work myself.
>
>On programming -- I did just enough on the CoCo that I knew I
> wouldn't like it! I wrote an extensive genealogy program, but based
> it on an existing GW-BASIC listing. CoCo3 BASIC was just to
> different to make it a simple conversion, which was the original
> intent, 80-90% of the code had to be re-written! But having a
> working framework to guide me sure did help. It was much to big a
> project for my first real coding experience, but I pulled it off and
> sold quite a few copies. I let someone else convert it to BASIC-09,
> I wasn't about to! I incorporated every little trick I could to make
> it fast -- many people thought it was in ML. I poked so that it
> showed up in the directory like an ML and wouldn't list, but also
> used the high speed poke (dropped down for disk I/O) and every
> little speed trick I could find.
>
>What I don't get is the disdain for line numbers in the programming
> community. I can understand that BASIC is limited and not ideal for
> a lot of programms, but why not a line numbered C? Okay, I know
> there is no point now, but when C or other languages were coming
> out, and even BASIC went away from line numbers. The numbers were
> just place markers, and made it easier to tell what line or range
> was referred to. Is the disdain simply that anyone can EASILY follow
> line numbered code, or something more practical -- like it's harder
> to add sections of code or use segments over in other programs?
> Adding is difficult, but then that's what the RENUM command was for.
> Of course with a lot of GOTOs and such it didn't always work 100%,
> so code had to be verified, but was it really that bad?

I never did like the line number stuffs, its semed to be so 1960's to 
me.  But I did do some stuff in Basic09, including that EDISK 
replacement that was $19,750 cheaper, 10x easier to use, and 4x faster 
than Grass Valleys Groups EDISK for the 300 series video switchers of 
yore.

As for C, its not that complex to track, because if you do it right, 
you have a program that calls a list of functions to get its job done.  

No one function needs to be, in 99% of the cases, more than 15-20 lines 
of code, and often less than 10.  If a 'function' seems to expand to 
more than 30 lines of code, its time to break it down into 
subfunctions IMO.  Malfunctioning code is SO much easier to 
troubleshoot when it can be nailed down to only 5 or 10 lines of code 
thats not doing what you thought you wrote when it runs. 

A bit like making liberal use of os9p4 in asm programs, a printf in a 
few strategic places is usually all the traceing needed to verify 
function.  They can even be conditionals that disappear from the 
object when the debug option is turned off for the final build.

[...]

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should use this
address: <gene.heskett at verizononline.net> which bypasses vz's
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Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.