[Ffmpeg-devel] compiler warnings

[Måns Rullgård]

Steve Lhomme <steve.lhomme at free.fr> writes:

> Having to guess exactly how a C compiler process data to know exactly
> what is does is bad engineering. Even though the code is correct and
> small, it makes it harder to read by a large number of coders. Making
> the code easily readable is important to maintain the code, not wonder
> if the compiler has to be C90 or C99 or whatever to compile a line
> correctly.

Code should be made easy to read for those who will actually read it,
not necessarily for every school kid with a computer.  Competent
programmers find the kind of code Rich advocates easier to read.

> That's why the famous quote from here "fix the compiler" is also not
> realistic in the real world. Most of the time you are given a compiler
> (and an IDE) that goes with the hardware you're working with (I'm not
> talking about PCs) and you just do with it. You'll just get fired if
> instead of fixing bugs you were saying your boss "it's not my fault,
> it's the compiler". It's an engineering practice that will get you
> nowhere.

I get away with it all the time at my day job.  Common phrases there
are things like "it's a driver bug", "it's the compiler's fault",
"it's a bug in some-component-not-under-our-team", followed by "we'll
just have to wait for them to fix it".

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mru at inprovide.com