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GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
Andreas Mertens27-Jun-22 5:28
professionalAndreas Mertens27-Jun-22 5:28 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
Daniel Pfeffer27-Jun-22 5:36
professionalDaniel Pfeffer27-Jun-22 5:36 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
Greg Utas27-Jun-22 7:05
professionalGreg Utas27-Jun-22 7:05 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
harold aptroot26-Jun-22 5:01
harold aptroot26-Jun-22 5:01 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
Gerry Schmitz26-Jun-22 5:55
mveGerry Schmitz26-Jun-22 5:55 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
trønderen26-Jun-22 13:14
trønderen26-Jun-22 13:14 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
Mircea Neacsu26-Jun-22 13:34
Mircea Neacsu26-Jun-22 13:34 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
trønderen26-Jun-22 16:54
trønderen26-Jun-22 16:54 
In those days we made printouts, marking corrections, additions and deletions using a ballpoint pen. Most times the printouts were the compiler listings, so we had the error messages readily at hand when we sat down to make all the corrections in one sweep from the top of the file to the bottom.

Printouts / compiler listings were essential! That's where we did most of our development and debugging - "Debugging by cranial massage", as one of my university lecturers called it. When we got more experienced, learning to insert debug output statements, we read two listings side by side: The compiler output (maybe with warning messages, but no fatal errors), and the printed output from the debug run.

An essential compiler quality metric in those days was the ability to report all errors in a single compiler run, to reduce both the number of compiler runs and the requirements for listing paper. The first compiler I read was a Pascal compiler, and was extremely impressed by how much resources was spent on recovery, going on with records describing e.g. an unknown symbol with all the possible interpretations of it: "It might be an integer, it might be a real, but not a string, not a label". If then a real literal was assigned to the symbol, the integer option was canceled, and subsequently, the symbol was treated as if it was a declared real variable. - A second quality metric was that one coding error, such as a missing declaration, should lead to one error message, not causing a cascade of hundreds of messages.

It looks to me as if modern compilers have thrown away both these qualities. They are not good at recovery, but rather tells: Fix this first error and recompile, and then I will tell you about more errors! And if you do ask it to go on, it may cancel the compilation when reaching 1000 messages ... which may all be consequential errors after a single typo ...

I guess I prefer the modern interactive frequent recompile development style. Yet I sometimes long back to those days when the number of error messages were at least within a magnitude or two of the number of actual coding errors. With the compilers of today, I certainly would not want work my way through a compiler listing with a few thousand error messages, trying to understand what are distinct errors and what are consequential ones, fixing the real ones with ed.

(Actually, I haven't used ed much at all, but several other line oriented, 'teletype oriented', editors that were not much different. Plus, of course, classic BASIC where you address the line you want to edit, or where you want to insert new lines, by the line number, mandatory on every line.)
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
Gary R. Wheeler26-Jun-22 5:59
Gary R. Wheeler26-Jun-22 5:59 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
Daniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 6:13
professionalDaniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 6:13 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
trønderen26-Jun-22 13:08
trønderen26-Jun-22 13:08 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
Daniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 20:12
professionalDaniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 20:12 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
Nelek26-Jun-22 10:32
protectorNelek26-Jun-22 10:32 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
trønderen26-Jun-22 11:51
trønderen26-Jun-22 11:51 
GeneralRe: How common is this? Pin
Daniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 20:47
professionalDaniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 20:47 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
jmaida26-Jun-22 17:01
jmaida26-Jun-22 17:01 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
Sander Rossel26-Jun-22 20:49
professionalSander Rossel26-Jun-22 20:49 
JokeRe: How common is this? Pin
Daniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 21:40
professionalDaniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 21:40 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
Cpichols27-Jun-22 2:46
Cpichols27-Jun-22 2:46 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
JohnDG5227-Jun-22 7:28
JohnDG5227-Jun-22 7:28 
AnswerRe: How common is this? Pin
englebart27-Jun-22 7:45
professionalenglebart27-Jun-22 7:45 
GeneralSo the pigeons in our yard started programming Pin
Daniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 2:40
professionalDaniel Pfeffer26-Jun-22 2:40 
GeneralRe: So the pigeons in our yard started programming Pin
Peter_in_278026-Jun-22 3:11
professionalPeter_in_278026-Jun-22 3:11 
GeneralRe: So the pigeons in our yard started programming Pin
DRHuff26-Jun-22 7:52
DRHuff26-Jun-22 7:52 
GeneralRe: So the pigeons in our yard started programming Pin
Gary R. Wheeler26-Jun-22 8:35
Gary R. Wheeler26-Jun-22 8:35 

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