The Tenth Commandment for C programmers:
Thou shalt foreswear, renounce, 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.
-- Harry Spencer
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....