Subject: SP2 advice...

(This message is being sent to all CPSC 102 Sec 1 students )

It is a supremely bad idea to try to combine bunches of logical
steps into one massively complicated C statement

    dist = (((vec_dot(pln->normal, pln->point)) -
                 (vec_dot(pln->normal, base)) / (vec_dot(pln->normal, dir)));

Rationale:
   (1) Its quite challenging to get the ( ) right (as the author
       of this one found out!)
   (2) WHEN (not if) it doesn't work, it is very difficult to use
       gdb to see WHICH one of the intermediate results was was
       not correct

   (3) (and most importantly) if you need me to debug one of these
       bad boys I'll send it back to you to fix it so that it does
       one operation per line of code.