Wes Garland wrote in a message to Mike Tripp:

 WG> Programmers like me just plain old don't like limits, particularly
 WG> not arbitrary ones (which may not have been arbitrary 
 WG> historically).

Agreed,  even though I don't do much in the way of programming these days. 
It really irritates me when I bump into these,  particularly when trying to
go past them gives odd results.

 WG> Instead, we prefer to code for ridiculous usage patterns, and let 
 WG> the users specify what the limits really ought to be -- unless, of 
 WG> course, a specification somewhere (not a de-facto standard) says 
 WG> otherwise. I guess that's why programmers like me tend to become 
 WG> UNIX Systems Programmers. 

 WG> Along with this same philosophy (for me, anyhow -- philosophy is a 
 WG> pretty personal thing) comes the "accept lenient; write strict" 
 WG> mode of operation. That is, accept malformed input where it is 
 WG> possible to determine the correct output, but NEVER produce 
 WG> incorrect output (even if "every system out there will accept it").

Let me add to that a quote that's stuck in my memory.  I'm not sure of the
exact wording,  but it goes something pretty much like "No program
should leave its sanity at the mercy of its input."  That was written
in one of the magazines I used to read by P. J. Plauger.  That name ring
any bells?  :-)

I've seen way too many horrible examples over the years of software that
did exactly that -- didn't get the "expected" input and behaved
irrationally...

Fortunately,  the stuff we're working with in here doesn't seem to fall
into that category,  that I've noticed.

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