Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: tgg@hplb.hpl.hp.com ()
Subject: Re: Looking for a smalltalk Guru to answer some simple questions
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:35:25 GMT
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Chris Normand (cnormand@arscorp.com) wrote:
|(If you wish to make 1 + 1 = 3, you can, however,
|most of Smalltalk is written in Smalltalk, so a change like that will
|most likely crash the image).  

A war story, possibly apochryphal, to do  with an early implementation
of Smalltalk, was that everything appeared to worked  correctly except
that  panes scrolled  in the wrong direction. The bug  was  eventually
traced to incorrect implementation of subtraction of negative numbers.

This made me think about:
	- the superb robustness of the environment
	- the difficulty of detecting errors in a 
	  robust environment

--
===============================================================================
            The above are my own views, not the views of HP
  Tom Gardner                 Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Filton Rd, 
  tgg@hplb.hpl.hp.com	      Stoke Gifford, Bristol, Avon, BS12 6QZ, ENGLAND.
  Fax: +44 117 9228924        Tel: +44 117 9799910 ext. 28192
===============================================================================

