Dick Delp wrote:
Vidor Demeter wrote:
Hi Folks!
I'm working with a project about programing. One of questions is 'what do you need in order to be a good programer?'. Have you some opinion about it???
/ Vidor
A couple of decades ago, Edsger Dijkstra was asked that very same question.
His answer was: "A thorough knowledge of one's native language."
Dijkstra was (and maybe still is) very proud of his English too, but in fact his writing was full of bloopers. And in his book ``A Discipline of Programming'' he made the argument that there was no point in testing programs because testing could only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence. He argued that the only way to have confidence in programs was to prove them correct mathematically. And he gave some examples of programs whose correctness he had demonstrated. When I read all of that, I was determined to debunk it. And sure enough, I discovered a big error in the initialization code of his convex hull program, an error that almost any test would have uncovered. Yes, testing can only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence. But that's a trivial corollary of the observation that nothing can prove the absence of bugs. Paul Abrahams -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/