[Cryptography] [cryptography] Underhanded Crypto

[Tom Mitchell]

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 8:59 PM, <lists at notatla.org.uk> wrote:

> Tom Mitchell <mitch niftyegg.com> writes:
>
> > On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 8:24 PM, Abe Singer <abe at oyvay.nu> wrote:
>
> > > Heck, just run the source through lint and blindly fix anything it
> finds,
> > > like use of uninitialized variables.
>
> > Well lint is a bit long in the tooth ... but modern compilers
> > have checkers and optional flags like ansii &  pedantic that are stricter
>
> I suspect the joke has been missed.
>
> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html
> http://www.links.org/?p=327
>

;-) Some very ugly code does passes all automated checks and
some "looks good to me" code does not.
The better tools allow meta comments that allow the equivalent
of  /* durn it Bob we need it here, see meeting notes 1/1/70 */
The better programmers do add good comments:
    /* We depend on the side effect of the next line */
And yes we are talking about Underhanded Code but I would
assert that preprocessor tricks be excluded and code that
makes a good compiler cough up a furball be marked down.

-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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