Quotable Gems

Branquart:

In your optimization scheme you eliminate all the things which are redundant and not useful; such things which seem to be bad programming. According to your experience, is it really worthwhile to eliminate these things?

Ershov:

Well, there are two aspects. First of all, it is a good thing to have an optimizing compiler because there are a lot of careless programmers... Optimization algorithms can reduce the losses caused by such bad programming. That is one point. Another point is that, if you have some syntactically directed construction of a program then you necessarily have much redundance. That is, the replacement of the source language patterns by machine constructs is based on local rules and there are many boundary effects which cannot be recognized if you have no optimizing algorithm...

Griffiths:

Can I protest against the idea, which is very paternalistic, of refusing to run somebody's program because you do not like it. You have defined a language in which this program is legal. Legal programs should be able to run, however bad they are. If you want to print out rude messages, then print out all the rude messages you like. I do not usually listen when people talk to me anyway.

...

Bowlden:

Really, the question is: what is the responsibility of a computer center toward its users? Is its job to teach them how to write good programs, or is its job to teach them how to solve their problems?

Ershov:

I would also like to comment that this is a part of a more general and also technical problem to what extent the programmer or compiler is responsible for the strict and direct relation between the structure of written programs and structure of executed programs. There are, of course, many smart programmers who would like to have a compiler in their hands as a tool and understanding its, in most cases, literal translation of the program structure, they prefer to use for their personal choice a selected language construction to better express their smart thoughts. But this is only a part of the real users of computers. Many of them ignore absolutely how to run and how to program. They simply express their thoughts, their problem, and they are careless about any consequences. It is a real part of users and... we have to recognize heir existence and overcome their deficiencies.

http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/paper/ALGOL_68-Implementation.pdf pp. 160-162

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