[ale] sloppy coding in breath tester

[tom]

On Fri, 15 May 2009, Jim Kinney wrote:

> I am reminded of _WHY_ the computer science majors are required to
> take so much math and science in school in addition to the programming
> classes.
>
> I also recall that most whined and complained about having to take
> those classes as they didn't seem "relevant to their major".
>
> I guess I know now what type of programmer the breathalyzer company hired.
>

I only scanned the link, so ...

There is another possiblity - the authors were never CS trained at all. 
I'd guess that many of the people writing code for the breathalyzer were 
originally engineers or scientists with a dominant background in 
instrumentation. Coding would have been pickup activity which started 
taking over their lives like kudzu. Hence sloppy code due to a lack of 
background.

> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Richard Bronosky <Richard at bronosky.com> wrote:
>> Re: The averaging -- As a DBA, I am constantly shocked by how often I
>> have to tell developers, "You can't do that with these numbers. You
>> aren't getting an error, but you also aren't getting anything
>> meaningful."
>>
>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Sean <drifter at oppositelock.org> wrote:
>>> Apparently there is sloppy code and *really* sloppy code.
>>>
>>> But I was a bit miffed at the terminal insult that some of the
>>> code had originally been written on an Atari!
>>>
>>> http://www.dwi.com/new-jersey/state-v-chun
<<snip>>