First error in 15 years
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A piece of code I wrote 15 years ago hit its first error, ever. Turned out that a different department broke their own rules on the format of a shared configuration file. Add a few more defensive checks as I plan to be retired before it happens again. I am sure that Honey would have solved this with a state table!
In my first university course on programming, we handed in 'coding sheets', which were copied to punch cards by a group of ladies having card punching as their meaning of life. (At least of working life.) Then they put the card decks into the batch job entry system for the huge mainframe. A day later, the job had been run, and we could pick up the listing (from both the compilation and run, if compilation was successful) and the card deck from the handout shelves. Those ladies were certainly not perfect, error free typists. And, in rush periods, it could take two days before the mainframe got around to run our job. So we grumbled a lot ... Around Christmas time, after four mandatory hand-in coding exercises, one of the girls in my class couldn't understand our grumbling. Who cares if it takes a couple of days before you get the results? What is really this thing about 'error messages'?? We slowly realized that after half a year as a programming student (with no prior coding experience), she had never made a single coding error, neither in syntax nor semantics, in any of the four exercises. Furthermore, the typing ladies had not made a single typo when copying her coding sheets. So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is! We tried to explain it to her, and she had problems understanding why we didn't fix such errors before handing in the coding sheets. When she left the room, the rest of us where very much in agreement: She had been missing out on some very important learning experiences :-)
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A piece of code I wrote 15 years ago hit its first error, ever. Turned out that a different department broke their own rules on the format of a shared configuration file. Add a few more defensive checks as I plan to be retired before it happens again. I am sure that Honey would have solved this with a state table!
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In my first university course on programming, we handed in 'coding sheets', which were copied to punch cards by a group of ladies having card punching as their meaning of life. (At least of working life.) Then they put the card decks into the batch job entry system for the huge mainframe. A day later, the job had been run, and we could pick up the listing (from both the compilation and run, if compilation was successful) and the card deck from the handout shelves. Those ladies were certainly not perfect, error free typists. And, in rush periods, it could take two days before the mainframe got around to run our job. So we grumbled a lot ... Around Christmas time, after four mandatory hand-in coding exercises, one of the girls in my class couldn't understand our grumbling. Who cares if it takes a couple of days before you get the results? What is really this thing about 'error messages'?? We slowly realized that after half a year as a programming student (with no prior coding experience), she had never made a single coding error, neither in syntax nor semantics, in any of the four exercises. Furthermore, the typing ladies had not made a single typo when copying her coding sheets. So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is! We tried to explain it to her, and she had problems understanding why we didn't fix such errors before handing in the coding sheets. When she left the room, the rest of us where very much in agreement: She had been missing out on some very important learning experiences :-)
trønderen wrote:
So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is!
Well, she could have been one of the super-programmers you occasionally hear about. I would be interested of knowing how her studies (and career) progressed...
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Sometimes when I don't get bug reports from my software I wonder if it's even being used ;P
Maybe there is a bug in sending the bug reports.
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In my first university course on programming, we handed in 'coding sheets', which were copied to punch cards by a group of ladies having card punching as their meaning of life. (At least of working life.) Then they put the card decks into the batch job entry system for the huge mainframe. A day later, the job had been run, and we could pick up the listing (from both the compilation and run, if compilation was successful) and the card deck from the handout shelves. Those ladies were certainly not perfect, error free typists. And, in rush periods, it could take two days before the mainframe got around to run our job. So we grumbled a lot ... Around Christmas time, after four mandatory hand-in coding exercises, one of the girls in my class couldn't understand our grumbling. Who cares if it takes a couple of days before you get the results? What is really this thing about 'error messages'?? We slowly realized that after half a year as a programming student (with no prior coding experience), she had never made a single coding error, neither in syntax nor semantics, in any of the four exercises. Furthermore, the typing ladies had not made a single typo when copying her coding sheets. So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is! We tried to explain it to her, and she had problems understanding why we didn't fix such errors before handing in the coding sheets. When she left the room, the rest of us where very much in agreement: She had been missing out on some very important learning experiences :-)
We had to do much the same in college, except that we had to punch our own cards. All in all, it wasn't a big challenge, if one didn't mind having to arrive at school at 3 AM to find an available machine. But speaking of errors, I tried creating one program in COBOL; IIRC, it was 83 lines, but managed to spew 107 errors. Even the COBOL expert in the white coat who worked in the computer center couldn't find a single error in my code. I never tried COBOL again, since FORTRAN was all the school required us to learn.
Will Rogers never met me.
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In my first university course on programming, we handed in 'coding sheets', which were copied to punch cards by a group of ladies having card punching as their meaning of life. (At least of working life.) Then they put the card decks into the batch job entry system for the huge mainframe. A day later, the job had been run, and we could pick up the listing (from both the compilation and run, if compilation was successful) and the card deck from the handout shelves. Those ladies were certainly not perfect, error free typists. And, in rush periods, it could take two days before the mainframe got around to run our job. So we grumbled a lot ... Around Christmas time, after four mandatory hand-in coding exercises, one of the girls in my class couldn't understand our grumbling. Who cares if it takes a couple of days before you get the results? What is really this thing about 'error messages'?? We slowly realized that after half a year as a programming student (with no prior coding experience), she had never made a single coding error, neither in syntax nor semantics, in any of the four exercises. Furthermore, the typing ladies had not made a single typo when copying her coding sheets. So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is! We tried to explain it to her, and she had problems understanding why we didn't fix such errors before handing in the coding sheets. When she left the room, the rest of us where very much in agreement: She had been missing out on some very important learning experiences :-)
trønderen wrote:
...she had problems understanding why we didn't fix such errors before handing in the coding sheets.
Maybe she was a fan of one of Knuth's famous quotes.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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In a similar vein: People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Ive got a T-towel with that on. Andy
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trønderen wrote:
So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is!
Well, she could have been one of the super-programmers you occasionally hear about. I would be interested of knowing how her studies (and career) progressed...
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
She completed her studies with high marks, and was into a management position so quickly that if she did any professional programming at all, it cannot have been for long. I once asked another classmate about it, and as far as he knew, she had never been programming. But as I understand it, she was a highly respected manager.
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In my first university course on programming, we handed in 'coding sheets', which were copied to punch cards by a group of ladies having card punching as their meaning of life. (At least of working life.) Then they put the card decks into the batch job entry system for the huge mainframe. A day later, the job had been run, and we could pick up the listing (from both the compilation and run, if compilation was successful) and the card deck from the handout shelves. Those ladies were certainly not perfect, error free typists. And, in rush periods, it could take two days before the mainframe got around to run our job. So we grumbled a lot ... Around Christmas time, after four mandatory hand-in coding exercises, one of the girls in my class couldn't understand our grumbling. Who cares if it takes a couple of days before you get the results? What is really this thing about 'error messages'?? We slowly realized that after half a year as a programming student (with no prior coding experience), she had never made a single coding error, neither in syntax nor semantics, in any of the four exercises. Furthermore, the typing ladies had not made a single typo when copying her coding sheets. So after a full semester, she didn't have a clue about what an error message is! We tried to explain it to her, and she had problems understanding why we didn't fix such errors before handing in the coding sheets. When she left the room, the rest of us where very much in agreement: She had been missing out on some very important learning experiences :-)
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Sometimes when I don't get bug reports from my software I wonder if it's even being used ;P
My observation is that if nobody is reporting any problem in a new feature, it's not because it's bug-free, it's because it's not being used. Then wait 6 months (after you've forgotten all the important details), *then* someone will find something and it'll take you forever to get re-acquainted with your own code...
