Why aren't we all speaking LISP now?

[John W. Baxter]

In article <mailman.989561715.29050.python-list at python.org>, Delaney,
Timothy <tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote:

> You can always write an insertion sort and get it right. You can always
> write a bubble sort and get it right.

One can also always get it wrong.  My favorite example was the student
who *almost* achieved the task "include sorting the symbol table of
this assembler between pass one and pass two [and use a binary search
in pass 2]"

He sorted the right *amount* of memory, and sorted it seemingly
correctly.  Unfortunately, pass 2 behaved remarkably oddly on the IBM
704 (oddly enough that the instructor became convinced it was a machine
failure).

I (another student) disageed, and the instructor let me look at the
dump.

The error was that he sorted memory the wrong direction from the start
of the symbol table:  704 code does not behave well after having been
sorted.  ;-)

  --John