Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: C, and what it is for Message-ID: <8537@smoke.ARPA> Date: 19 Sep 88 21:55:01 GMT References: <8809092242.AA20696@BOEING.COM> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 15 In article <8809092242.AA20696@BOEING.COM> carroll%seatac@BOEING.COM (Jeff Carroll 544-6349) writes: >... give their customers what they want. [Presumably "they" means "the customers".] The above policy tends to produce products that are not in the customers' genuine best interests. What the customers think they want and what they would rationally desire if they were better informed are seldom the same thing. A major part of the system analyst's job is to help customers identify their actual requirements and to evaluate how well various alternative proposed solutions meet their actual (long-term) needs. I don't know how this relates to use of C for numerical programming other than that what a Fortran programmer thinks is essential may very well not be, in another programming language.