#: 5746 S15/Hot Topics
    31-Jul-90  23:41:52
Sb: #5723-#OSK - passwords?
Fm: Scott t. Griepentrog 72427,335
To: Pete Lyall 76703,4230 (X)

Yah, we agree to disagree.  Quite frankly, I don't like a lot of the way Unix
has done things.  Although I will admit to getting into termcap more recently. 
I agree with modularity, enginering, and team playing (to an extent).  But I
don't believe that we should adopt Unix standards just because they're unix
standards.  We can create our own standards better than that.  If you want to
compile a unix program, okay then, but if you want to do something better, you
may be limited with the Unix stuff.

For example, *none* of my software uses printf().  Or any C standard I/O for
that matter.  Why?  Overhead.  Bigger code, slower speed.  Plus all the
problems involved in trying to talk to a specialized device with only C std. I
see a program with scanf in it, I won't touch it.  Can't stand the way it
inputs.  But hey, if you're into beating yourself...

Oh, and I don't program to all hours of the night and keep myself up with
caffiene (never did use Jolt, but used to live on Dew's and Milky's back in
college).  But I have long since adopted quite normal hours, normal (actually
extremely healthy) eating habits, etc.  But I still don't believe in doing more
work just to be compatible with the Unix standard.  Believe it or not, the
majority of my coding (the exception being stuff tied to OS9 features) is
portable to PC's and Unix.  I work with all three, though write primarily for
OS9.

To give you an example of why I *know* my attitude pays off, I have just
recently taken over a job doing some C coding for an outfit with COM (Computer
Output Microfiche) units.  They are using PC's to read in huge amounts of stuff
from magtape, process, and feed to the fiche machines.  The guy they had
working on the project before me was formally trained, and firmly entrenched
(sp?) in the 'standard, compatible, *unix*' way of doing things. They had lots
of problems with his code slowing the works down, which is a major problem if
you've got a half gig file to process (I'm not kidding!) and at the max rate of
the magtape transfer it will take all day anyways.

 (cotd next)

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