What was your most frustrating debug experience? [modified]
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I am currently working on a custom layout engine that has to deal with lots of polygons and take relative coordinates as well as rotations of certain items of a list of polygons into account. I have been hunting a(nother) bug for a couple of hours now and I have to say that this whole thing is the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. On the other side, it is also one of the most exciting things I have worked on but it is certainly slowly killing me. What is the most frustrating debug experience/project/bug you ever had to deal with?
modified on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:58 PM
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I am currently working on a custom layout engine that has to deal with lots of polygons and take relative coordinates as well as rotations of certain items of a list of polygons into account. I have been hunting a(nother) bug for a couple of hours now and I have to say that this whole thing is the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. On the other side, it is also one of the most exciting things I have worked on but it is certainly slowly killing me. What is the most frustrating debug experience/project/bug you ever had to deal with?
modified on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:58 PM
I was writing a custom permitting application in Java 1 and not allowed to use 1.2 because it was "un-tested" and my transforms and coordinates did not match up with the bosses code. After two-weeks of rewriting and proving my code mathematically it turned out the error was in his perfect and untouchable code. Guess who was dinged in a performance review? (me) For details it was a Java 1.0 application using Javascript to connect to ESRI through LiveConnect.
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego. -
I was writing a custom permitting application in Java 1 and not allowed to use 1.2 because it was "un-tested" and my transforms and coordinates did not match up with the bosses code. After two-weeks of rewriting and proving my code mathematically it turned out the error was in his perfect and untouchable code. Guess who was dinged in a performance review? (me) For details it was a Java 1.0 application using Javascript to connect to ESRI through LiveConnect.
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego.Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
Guess who was dinged in a performance review? (me)
unbelievable... some people...
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I am currently working on a custom layout engine that has to deal with lots of polygons and take relative coordinates as well as rotations of certain items of a list of polygons into account. I have been hunting a(nother) bug for a couple of hours now and I have to say that this whole thing is the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. On the other side, it is also one of the most exciting things I have worked on but it is certainly slowly killing me. What is the most frustrating debug experience/project/bug you ever had to deal with?
modified on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:58 PM
The worst I recall involved invalid data in a stream of data at a client site. Eventually we had to insert "debugging statements", rebuild, deploy to the client's system, run it to see where the problem was, and repeat. Then have it log the problematic value to determine what the problem was. And finally we were able to determine a fix, test it, remove the debugging statements, rebuild, and deploy once more.
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I am currently working on a custom layout engine that has to deal with lots of polygons and take relative coordinates as well as rotations of certain items of a list of polygons into account. I have been hunting a(nother) bug for a couple of hours now and I have to say that this whole thing is the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. On the other side, it is also one of the most exciting things I have worked on but it is certainly slowly killing me. What is the most frustrating debug experience/project/bug you ever had to deal with?
modified on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:58 PM
My most frustrating was at uni... locating the cause of an intermittent problem in a C program... which turned out to be something along the lines of:
if (x = 5)I can't remember how long it took me to track down that missing second = sign in the equality test, but it had me wondering how I'd go at development in the real world!------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------
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My most frustrating was at uni... locating the cause of an intermittent problem in a C program... which turned out to be something along the lines of:
if (x = 5)I can't remember how long it took me to track down that missing second = sign in the equality test, but it had me wondering how I'd go at development in the real world!------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------
Are you sure it was the second?
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My most frustrating was at uni... locating the cause of an intermittent problem in a C program... which turned out to be something along the lines of:
if (x = 5)I can't remember how long it took me to track down that missing second = sign in the equality test, but it had me wondering how I'd go at development in the real world!------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------
Once I had something similar except in C# (can't remember if it was 1.1 or 2.0) - as you might know VS normally throws an error when you try to do that. I had a conditional break point where I forgot the second = sign in the condition and to my surprise the condition was actually executed and VS did not give an error. Only discovered it when I saw that the integer variable suddenly changed value when stepping over a line that had absolutely nothing to do with the variable (but had a conditional breakpoint)... edit: as a result of that experience I don't use conditional break points all that much :-D anymore
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My most frustrating was at uni... locating the cause of an intermittent problem in a C program... which turned out to be something along the lines of:
if (x = 5)I can't remember how long it took me to track down that missing second = sign in the equality test, but it had me wondering how I'd go at development in the real world!------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------
MY worst was
while (FunctionWithSideEffects1() && FunctionWithSideEffects2())where the MS and borland compilers didn't behave the same order with short circuit execution. I'd written and debugged the program in MS because I hated the borland IDE, but the assignment was graded in Borland. Figuring that out took a few hours.Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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I am currently working on a custom layout engine that has to deal with lots of polygons and take relative coordinates as well as rotations of certain items of a list of polygons into account. I have been hunting a(nother) bug for a couple of hours now and I have to say that this whole thing is the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. On the other side, it is also one of the most exciting things I have worked on but it is certainly slowly killing me. What is the most frustrating debug experience/project/bug you ever had to deal with?
modified on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:58 PM
Back some 20+ years ago I was writing an OS in assembly for the Z80. I was using the alternate register to save things and swap back and forth rapidly. Things were going crazy, so I assumed my code was the problem. After about 3 weeks of digging, testing, etc., it finally turned out the Z80 chip I was using had a bad set of alternate registers. A new Z80 fixed the problem and it turned out my original code was indeed correct.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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I am currently working on a custom layout engine that has to deal with lots of polygons and take relative coordinates as well as rotations of certain items of a list of polygons into account. I have been hunting a(nother) bug for a couple of hours now and I have to say that this whole thing is the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. On the other side, it is also one of the most exciting things I have worked on but it is certainly slowly killing me. What is the most frustrating debug experience/project/bug you ever had to deal with?
modified on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:58 PM