[R] R 2.0.0 not suffisantly reliable to be be used

[Rajarshi Guha]

(forgot to post to the list)

On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 09:44, Mike Prager wrote:
> >On Sun, 10 Oct 2004, Fan wrote:
> >
> > > For occasional users, I would say, there's no worst thing than that:
> > > you installed the new release, and soem of your existing codes no
> > > longer work !
> 
> There is a close parallel here.  On comp.lang.fortran, a frequent problem 
> is that existing code doesn't work with a new compiler. Such complaints are 
> often from occasional Fortran users, those who have inherited code from 
> others, or those who have been using a single compiler for 20 years and 
> have finally updated.
> 
> In the vast majority of cases, the code in question is not standard 
> conforming.  Either (1) the old compiler ignored various syntax errors, (2) 
> it gave the right answer by luck (i.e., the programmer made assumptions 
> that the compiler met, but that Fortran in general does not meet), or (3) 
> the old release gave the wrong answers, which were never checked.

I'll second this. I inherited a ton of old fortran code from the 70's
and 80's and each time I recompile with different compilers (or newer
versions even) I get more bugs - which as mentioned above, were based on
asumptions the compiler met but were'nt really standard.

I'm all for my code breaking with new releases if it shows me where the
bugs are :)

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Rajarshi Guha <rxg218 at psu.edu> <http://jijo.cjb.net>
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