Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!davidsen From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: UNIX Remembered Message-ID: <12238@steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 26 Sep 88 19:22:06 GMT References: <1020003@hpisoa2.HP.COM> <3803@omepd> <888@stcns3.stc.oz> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 16 Nothing wrong with minimal error messages... I took a couse in programming languages once in which we did four or five languages in 15 weeks. I knew all of them except COBOL, so I got credit for projects on two at once by writing a BASIC compiler in FORTRAN for the CDC3300. If the statement was not recognized the message was "not BASIC" and if it was not formed correctly the message was "wrong". I had a subtle error in an editor once, which resulted in a register dump and a message to call me. No one did, they just retried. Finally I changed the message to read "dog germs" and people called me regularly to ask the it meant. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me