Don't put BASIC code in your emails

&#62; 10 Subject == getConfig(Email[Subject])<p>This is a particularly funny bug to write in pseudo-BASIC; considering that in BASIC a single '=' is used to test for equality, as well as for assignment.<p>I can see why they need all that process.

10 GOTO Subject? For Pete's sake!<p>That's the problem with this whole "structured programming" fad: nobody knows how to write honest, plain old spaghetti-code anymore.<p>As for me, I enjoy throwing a goto or two into my Obj-C and Java code every once and awhile. It's perfectly legit.

sounds like a healthy startup company to me. I loved the insider jokes that got passed around at the last good startup I worked at. We had a bugzilla bug passed around for 4 years and several hundred people before the company got bought out and went to hell. It was a good run though.

So is structured development really better than off-the-cuff development? In this case it sure looks like a structured environment would have caught the bug in the original code but it also means 10 times more people getting their fingers in the pie.

Before we all agree that BASIC is indeed dead, I have a friend that recently reached out to me for some help writing an AppleSoft BASIC app for some CS course. Never figured out why someone is still teaching it...

The real question is what self-respecting programmer would instinctively reach for BASIC as the language to write a joke in? Methinks this says more about the jokester than he wanted to say...

Heh, looks like it's a Microsoft email thread -- the Ship-It reference suggests so.

Thinking the joke could be much more elegantly written in Perl, sed, or LISP