about main()

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 4:27 AM, Jim Lee <jlee54 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 07/05/18 10:47, Calvin Spealman wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> You say "pitfall", but I say "allow developers to focus on higher-level
>> problems and enable developers to specialize among tasks so every single one
>> of us doesn't have to be a jack of all trades just to build a todo list
>> app".
>>
>>
>
> Sure, that's the *benefit*, but the benefit doesn't erase the *pitfall*.
>
> It's the same as with any other convenience.  When a convenience becomes a
> necessity, skill is lost.
>
> Take a village of people.  They live mostly on wild berries.  One day, a man
> invents an automated way to sort good berries from poisonous berries.  Soon,
> all the villagers take their berries to him to be sorted.  The man dies, but
> passes the secret on to his son before doing so.  This continues for a few
> generations.  Eventually, the final descendant dies with no children, and
> the secret vanishes.  Now, the entire village is clueless when it comes to
> identifying the poisonous berries.
>

I would respect your analogy more if every compiler used today were
forty years old and not being developed by anyone other than its
original creator(s).

ChrisA