10.0486 programming: pragmatics, with a request

WILLARD MCCARTY (willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Mon, 2 Dec 1996 22:58:26 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 10, No. 486.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: "Charles L. Creegan" <ccreegan@ncwc.edu> (14)
Subject: pragmatics of programming

Um, this is really dumb but...will all those inclined to submit useful URLs
to the list please *not* put them at the end of a sentence, followed by a
full stop. The point-and-click routine in Eudora 1.5.4 persists in reading
the full stop as part of the URL whereupon most http servers give an error
message. E.g. (just the latest):
http://www.maa.org/t_and_l/ would succeed, but I got an error because it was
written http://www.maa.org/t_and_l/.

By the way, COBOL always struck me as aesthetically designed for bankers who
were nervous about computer code. Those responsible for creating the
language either were insane or had some such ulterior motive. How else to
explain source code syntax like (to take a random example from my old textbook)
"MULTIPLY GROSS BY .0585 GIVING FICA ROUNDED."

--
Charles L. Creegan    N.C. Wesleyan College    ccreegan@ncwc.edu
http://www.ncwc.edu:80/~ccreegan