TTYSCAN and the programming Gestapo

[Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>]

    Date: 25 APR 1980 2257-EST
    From: ALAN at MIT-MC (Alan Bawden)

    ... I my opinion, if you are doing some kind of non-repeatable side 
    effect at readtime,  then you are probably doing something wrong...

Say, a latter day Yuri Geller: able to debug programs while they are
sealed in a bell jar. I thought that Dijkstra and his co-Hoare-ts
had an exclusive right to this holier-than-thou-ness. How about this
for a radical idea: let the person writing the program - you know,
the guy (or dame) who knows what the program is supposed to do - 
decide what's right and wrong with his (her) own work?

			-rpg-