Significant whitespace

Steven D'Aprano steven at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au
Mon Jan 4 01:56:03 EST 2010


On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:42:44 -0500, David Robinow wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <mailman.386.1262576043.28905.python-list at python.org>,
>>  David Robinow <drobinow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 8:09 PM, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote:
>>> > More than "not required", it was "not relevant".  This led to one of
>>> > the most infamous programming blunders in the early days of the
>>> > space program, when one programmer accidentially typed a period
>>> > instead of a comma resulting in the loss of a satellite:
>>> Interesting story. Did you make it up?
>>
>> It's a fairly well known story.
>>
>> http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.64.html#subj4.2
>  Sure. But the question is, "Who made it up?"
> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fortran
> 
> Computer folklore has incorrectly attributed the loss of the Mariner 1
> space probe to a syntax error in a Fortran program. For example, "Recall
> the first American space probe to Venus, reportedly lost because Fortran
> cannot recognize a missing comma in a DO statement…"[


What makes you believe it is incorrect?



-- 
Steven



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