[PLUG] The joy of refactoring

[Dave]

In 1969-70 I was at the U of Ills where I met a DEC PDP-8. Would change 
my career path.

Ran my Doctoral Dissertation data analyses on an IBM 360/40 in 1970 at 
Cal Poly SLO. Fun days.


On 8/23/2017 6:01 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 2017, Alan wrote:
>
>> Sometimes a rewrite is a useful and needed thing.
>     Thanks, Alan, for allowing us to share our obscure bug experiences on this
> thread. :-)
>
>     In grad school in 1972 I wrote an ecosystem ecological energy flow model
> in FORTRAN IV to run on the U. of Illinois' IBM S/360. It used more than a
> whole box of 80-column Hollerith cards for input. When it ran it produed
> incorrect results, but only the same 2 or 3 wrong answers each time. So I
> printed the source code listing on the wide green-bar paper that all the
> line printers used. The output was about 1 inch thick.
>
>     I carefully examined each line of code multiple times without seeing the
> error. Finally, I took the printed listing to the computer center's help
> desk. They examined it without finding the problem.
>
>     One day, strictly by chance while looking at a new printed copy (likely
> done on a printer with a newer ribbon) I saw the error jump up and bite me
> on the nose.
>
>     Instead of a loop index written as FOR I = 1 TO N I had mistyped it as FOR
> 1 = 1 TO N. Distinguishing 1 from the uppercase I was difficult and, because
> all of us expected to see I and not 1 in that position we all overlooked it.
>
>     Haven't forgotten this after all these years.
>
> Rich
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug