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.