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by scubaguy 2964 days ago
I would propose that when you create a library, you think of other programmers like web designers think of end users. In addition to simplicity of the API, efficiency of the code, and proper encapsulation, you think, "How can I prevent users of my library from making mistakes?"

It's not an accusation that the author of strftime didn't have this mindset. Rather, it's to say that we should be more mindful of studies on human behaviors against programming APIs.

1 comments

The author of strftime had no idea it would be diddled with some crazy ISO C bullshit that will take up nearly every letter in the alphabet. Please, let us not drag the strftime author into this; that author provided a simple, mostly clean formatting mechanism with mostly mnemonic codes: save for a few gotchas to watch out for like %m versus %M.