Re: Pi.
- From: "James Giles" <jamesgiles@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:10:20 GMT
Richard Edgar wrote:
> James Giles wrote:
>
>>> But, of course, <after> visual checking the non-conforming spaces
>>> can be elided for the convenience of the compiler as opposed to
>>> its human... :)
>>
>>
>> This is dangerous in itself. How do you know the blanks are
>> *correctly* elided? Doing it manually is a pain.
>
> If someone cannot correctly delete five or six spaces _once_ from a
> line of text, then they probably have bigger problems than getting
> pi correct to twenty decimal places or so. [...]
Still, people get distracted: the phone rings, it's late, whatever.
And once you've made the error, you still believe that you've
just carefully double-checked the value of the constant.
> [...] We are not talking about
> constants that have to change every time a program is run, [...]
We aren't? PI doesn't change, but we're also talking about the
syntax that's accepted by the language. Other constants may
indeed change every time the program runs. All the more
reason not to have to remove the spaces that make the literals
more legible.
> [...] but
> about those which are defined once for _all_ programs. [...]
All the more reason not to change them *after* you've double-checked
their value.
--
J. Giles
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Pi.
- From: Paul Van Delst
- Re: Pi.
- References:
- Prev by Date: Re: Pi.
- Next by Date: Re: Pi.
- Previous by thread: Re: Pi.
- Next by thread: Re: Pi.
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
