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But that is not a specification for a compiler. That is just one of the requirement. It’s still missing all the error cases that can happen. Granted, most of those decisions will be taken at implementation time or during design discussions, but I believe if we noted them down, it would have been longer than the code. It’s just that people don’t bother and refer to the code for these kind of information.

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> if we noted them down, it would have been longer than the code

If you are only noting down requirements of what the program is doing rather than how it should do that thing, I would expect that writing the requirements would necessarily be more succinct than writing the program.

It terrifies me every time I realize people are just jumping into writing code without specifying what that code is required to do. A day of hacking saves an hour of critical thought and planning.

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