Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)

Quoting David Starner <dvdeug@...>:

> On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 03:30:11PM +0200, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > But the worst part is that
> > it feels so artificial - when would a programmer not have access to
> > computer?!? To top it off, one's probably made a number of idiot
> errors that
> > one'd seen instantly if one was able to test-compile it.
>
> Back in the day, people punched up the program and handed it to the
> computer operator, who would return the results to the programmer the
> next day. I assume they learned not to make those idiot errors pretty
> quickly.
Well, the benefits of a new technology are best measured by the amount of
novel laziness it allows!

Just to be obnoxious, I might point out that processing capacity nowadays is
pretty cheap compared to programmer man-hours*, wherefore the trial and error
approach (which cuts out the time the programmer would otherwise be double-
checking error-free code), little doubt, saves money.

* Should this be person-hours in these days of PCness?

                                                              Andreas

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