🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5...@enea.se> som...@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>tom reingold (t...@bellcore.com) writes:
>>I heard in the folklore that once a COBOL programmer wrote a program
>>	IF I = 1 THEN ADD 1 TO COUNTER.
>>	IF I = 2 THEN ADD 2 TO COUNTER.
>I have actually seen such a program. It was not Cobol, but Fortran
>.....................But the sad story was when I went through the
>exams with a teacher at the CS department. (I was only an assisting
>student teacher.) And he said: "It clumsy, but it is correct; it
>would work. We can't disapprove him." He had the final say, but I 
>would even less approve that program today.

There was a program written in BASIC for the TRS-80 Model I to assist 
with fantasy role-playing gaming (the "Dungeon Master's Familiar") that 
appeared in an early 1980's issue of "Dragon" magazine.  The programmer
wanted to generate a random number between 1 and 4 if the user typed
"4", a random number between 1 and 6 if the user typed "6", etc.  As I
recall, the code looked like this:
-------------------------------------
    def fnr(x) = int(rnd*x) + 1
...
    input z$ : z = val(z$)
    if z = 4 gosub 100
    if z = 6 gosub 200
    if z = 8 gosub 300
...
100 a = fnr(4) : return
200 a = fnr(6) : return
300 a = fnr(8) : return
-------------------------------------
Talk about doing things the hard way!  And this program didn't just get
turned in as a class assignment, it got published!  I remember typing it
in to my old C-64 (translating to C-basic at the same time), and getting
to that section of code.  I was stunned....

Jim Northrup                                               nort...@wpi.wpi.edu
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA  01609
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life.  Then I would know when to duck.
-- 
Jim Northrup                                               nort...@wpi.wpi.edu
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA  01609
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life.  Then I would know when to duck.