Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Well now, there are basically two ways to do documentation:
>>
>> You already lost. If you're not documenting things that have no place 
>> in the source code to put the documentation, you've already failed at 
>> documenting your system.
> 
> That too.
> 
> I'm thinking about documenting a library API,

It's fine for the details. But try to document (say) the BSD interface to 
TCP by documenting only the listen(), accept(), bind(), and connect() calls. 
Without understanding what an IP address is, or a socket, or how DNS works, 
etc you're still not going to win.

Or take something like a big windowing system, or a 3D graphics system, or a 
physics library, and try to document *just* the routines without documenting 
the architecture of the system.  You'll spend three days trying to find out 
where to start reading the documentation.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> As far as I can tell, 98% of all security issues are buffer overruns - 
> trivially fixable, yet nobody seems to think it's necessary.

The three biggest are buffer overruns, SQL injection, and XSS injection.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New wrote:

> It's fine for the details. But try to document (say) the BSD interface 
> to TCP by documenting only the listen(), accept(), bind(), and connect() 
> calls. Without understanding what an IP address is, or a socket, or how 
> DNS works, etc you're still not going to win.
> 
> Or take something like a big windowing system, or a 3D graphics system, 
> or a physics library, and try to document *just* the routines without 
> documenting the architecture of the system.  You'll spend three days 
> trying to find out where to start reading the documentation.

Ah yes... This is how I tried to learn OpenGL. (By reading function 
descriptions, that is.) It's not very easy...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> As far as I can tell, 98% of all security issues are buffer overruns - 
>> trivially fixable, yet nobody seems to think it's necessary.
> 
> The three biggest are buffer overruns, SQL injection, and XSS injection.

Not for desktop applications, I'd suspect. (Injection attacks are 
typically more applicable to websites.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Not for desktop applications, I'd suspect. (Injection attacks are 
> typically more applicable to websites.)

Yes. This was from SANS, so they cover pretty much everything, from 
operating systems to desktop apps to web apps.

Altho have you heard of the Slammer attack? :-) That's basically code injection.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Captain Jack wrote:

> I recall three different people (all academics, natch) 
> making predictions of this sort. One said the "universal" language would be 
> based on C, one cited Pascal, and the other one used the phrase "Super 
> LISP", although he didn't really explain what would be super about it.


You know you're talking to an academic when he says that PASCAL will 
become universally popular.  I've never seen it used outside of the 
context of learning to program.

Regards,
John

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John VanSickle wrote:
> You know you're talking to an academic when he says that PASCAL will 
> become universally popular.  I've never seen it used outside of the 
> context of learning to program.

It was quite popular for commercial code on microcomputers in the 80's. UCSD 
Pascal as well as a few others were pretty common for programming Z-80 
machines, for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New wrote:
> What comes after Object Oriented?
> 
> I mean, we started with assembler, then libraries, then HLLs, then 
> portable HLLs, then interpreters, then structured programming, then a 
> whole bunch of stuff that nobody really picked up (workspaces, LISP, 
> self-modifying code, sophisticated macros, functional programming, etc), 
> then Object Oriented, then .... nothing.
> 
> Why has programming language development been functionally stalled for 
> 30 years?
> 

More like we started with binary commands, moved on to assembler 
mnemonics, then Pascal / C type command-oriented, then class based 
object-oriented...

Since we're dealing with progressive levels of encapsulation here, the 
next layer deals with more abstract object types.  I believe Lisp and 
Haskell are examples of this level.  Following that, we would probably 
see something which allows more abstract manipulation of systems.

...Chambers

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Darren New wrote:
> Because I program for a living, and 99% of the time it's tedious, error 
> prone, and suckful.  And the hardware hasn't stopped improving. But I'm 
> still using the same programming techniques I used on my 2MHz 
> sparkstation with 4Meg of RAM.


There are serious attempts to improve programmer efficiency, but they 
are often met with derision and scorn.

Case in point: I mentioned to one of my instructors that I switched from 
C++ to C#, and his response was, "So you took a step backward, then?"

You get even stronger reactions from people about Visual Basic.  This, 
despite the fact that VB and C# are both designed to *increase* 
programmer efficiency.

...Chambers

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On 3-10-2009 3:08, John VanSickle wrote:
> Captain Jack wrote:
> 
>> I recall three different people (all academics, natch) making 
>> predictions of this sort. One said the "universal" language would be 
>> based on C, one cited Pascal, and the other one used the phrase "Super 
>> LISP", although he didn't really explain what would be super about it.
> 
> 
> You know you're talking to an academic when he says that PASCAL will 
> become universally popular.  I've never seen it used outside of the 
> context of learning to program.

I did

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