In response to the inquiry of Mr. McDonough shown below, I am posting a
quote published in the current edition of "More Programming Pearls" by
Jon Bentley,

  Mr. McDonough wrote:

> This is why I question a 20-80 split on write-debug. I used to see close
> to a 10-90 split in my own code, now I see closer to a 80-20 split.
> I am not an expert programmer by any means. That is why I am asked for your
> experiences. Do 'pro' progammers see a similar payoff?

  "Of all my programming bugs, 80% ar syntax errors.  Of the remaining
   20%, 80% are trivial logic errors.  Of the remaining 4%, 80% are
   pointer errors.  And the remaining 0.8% are hard."

                                     Mac Donner
                                     IBM Watson Research Center

   from More Programming Pearls  by Jon Bentely,  p 60
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                 Addision-Wesley, 1988
                                 ISBN  0-201-11889-0


Richard Riehle
AdaWorks Software Engineering