[Info-vax] BASIC (and Horizon)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/29/2024 1:27 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On the plus side, and to take the opportunity to vent my anger at something
> that I get more angry about whenever more details are revealed, at least
> you know how to reverse the sign of a variable without having to write a
> function to do it. :-( :-(
> 
> See:
> 
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926582
> 
> Original reference:
> 
> https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/fuj00080690-report-eposs-pinicl-task-force
> 
> See page 17 onwards of the PDF. :-(
> 
> Innocent people went to jail because of the system this code is
> a part of, and because of the coverup around it, and it took
> a TV drama to really get things moving. :-(
> 
> So, yes, I may make fun of your line numbers, but at least you most
> certainly know what you are doing, unlike the above people.

The code is VB6.

But none of the problems are Basic specific. It is possible
to write the same bad code in C or Fortran or whatever.

So it just shows that there are some really really bad programmers out
there.

Arne

PS: Good compilers may have detected the unreachable code. But it
     is still good vs bad compiler not good vs bad language.