The Ninth Commandment for C programmers:
Thy external identifiers shall be unique in the first six characters, though
this harsh discipline be irksome and the years of its necessity stretch before
thee seemingly without end, lest thou tear thy hair out and go mad on that
fateful day when thou desirest to make thy program run on an old system.
-- Harry Spencer
Related:
Quote #33
The 9th Commandment for C Programmers (Annotated Henry Spencer)
states thus:
IX Thy external identifiers shall be unique in the first
six characters, though this harsh discipline be irksome
and the years of its necessity stretch before thee
seemingly without end, lest thou tear thy hair out and
go mad on that fateful day when thou desirest to make
thy program run on an old system....
The Tenth Commandment for C programmers:
Thou shalt foreswea enounce, and abjure the vile heresy which claimeth
that All the world's a VAX, and have no commerce with the benighted
heathens who cling to this barbarous belief, that the days of thy program may
be long even though the days of thy current machine be short....