Silly?!!
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
A string buffer overflow inside an
ifstatement that caused the conditional to turn into an infinite loop. :doh: That was quite an eye opener...the machine was a Z-80 running CP/M+, and I was using a command line compiler without a source debugger. I finally figured it out by single stepping the disassembly under Z8E (a remarkable advanced freeware assembly debugger of the time). :)Anna :rose: Currently working mostly on: Visual Lint :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "Be yourself - not what others think you should be" - Marcia Graesch "Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart" - A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
if((a != b) & (a == c) & (c == b)) //a, b, and c are integers { //Do something } else { //throw nasty exception that when caught results in email being sent to multiple individuals and blaming dumb users. Also, //keep trying, as maybe it will be different next time. Yeah, that's the ticket... }
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
Many, it will be a long list and I found some of them late after looking at the debug dumps. It took me a while to figure out the silly mistake that I am describing in this post. I found out that I committ mistakes more if I want to write complex code trying to over optimize something. Since then, I keep things simple. The code went something like this:
class FieldDataHolder
{
union
{
double doubleData;
char[16] stringData;
} data;
}class Field
{void* pData;
Field()
{
pData = &data;
}
}The problem came when I added a whole bunch of
Fields to avectorofFields. -- modified at 16:36 Wednesday 16th August, 2006
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -Brian Kernighan
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
I asked a programming question in the Lounge once
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
Nader Elshehabi wrote:
What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??
I've made too many to count. :rolleyes: Although, one of the oddities I tend to do is when I haven't programmed in VB (for work, cut me some slack :)) for years after a long stint of C/C++, I'll instinctively put semicolons at the end of the lines.
Nader Elshehabi wrote:
Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it.
That reminds me; don't try to upgrade a non-upgradeable PC. My first PC had a feature to store DOS 2.1 (or maybe it was 2.2) bootstrap code on ROM that showed up as a fake drive C: so you didn't need a diskette to start the computer. I'll make a long story short and say it didn't survive the upgrade. Oh how we learn. :-D
Jeremy Falcon
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
regressing from C++ programming to C programming ( using a C compiler ):
int someFunction( )
{
/// declared some variables...
/// do something ...int iSomeResults;
/// continue doing something else.
/// ...
}it took us ( 4 person ) at least 1/2 hour to figure it out. :|
Maximilien Lincourt Your Head A Splode - Strong Bad
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regressing from C++ programming to C programming ( using a C compiler ):
int someFunction( )
{
/// declared some variables...
/// do something ...int iSomeResults;
/// continue doing something else.
/// ...
}it took us ( 4 person ) at least 1/2 hour to figure it out. :|
Maximilien Lincourt Your Head A Splode - Strong Bad
Maximilien wrote:
it took us ( 4 person ) at least 1/2 hour to figure it out.
I actually like that fact about C. It helps enforce better variable usage and planning IMO. Most people tend to throw them around as if they are candy.
Jeremy Falcon
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I asked a programming question in the Lounge once
OUCH!!:laugh:
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Maximilien wrote:
it took us ( 4 person ) at least 1/2 hour to figure it out.
I actually like that fact about C. It helps enforce better variable usage and planning IMO. Most people tend to throw them around as if they are candy.
Jeremy Falcon
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gantww wrote:
Is it something about where the variable was declared?
Programming Question!!!!! ;P But yeah, in C you have to declare in them a block before you do anything else. If you really wanted to declare something in the middle of a block just put it in brackets for a new block.
Jeremy Falcon
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OUCH!!:laugh:
Well, the upside was, after it was fried, I was able to open up the computer and learn about hardware.
Jeremy Falcon
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Maximilien wrote:
it took us ( 4 person ) at least 1/2 hour to figure it out.
I actually like that fact about C. It helps enforce better variable usage and planning IMO. Most people tend to throw them around as if they are candy.
Jeremy Falcon
I disagree, I think it's good form to declare variables where you're going to use them, to limit their scope.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog
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Maximilien wrote:
it took us ( 4 person ) at least 1/2 hour to figure it out.
I actually like that fact about C. It helps enforce better variable usage and planning IMO. Most people tend to throw them around as if they are candy.
Jeremy Falcon
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
Most people tend to throw them around as if they are candy.
What, like they're cheap? :rolleyes:
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I disagree, I think it's good form to declare variables where you're going to use them, to limit their scope.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog
Christian Graus wrote:
I think it's good form to declare variables where you're going to use them, to limit their scope.
Me too, and C doesn't stop you from doing that. Every block has their own scope. If you need to limit the scope of a variable then surround it in a new block. But, in my experience I've seen that declaring variables on the fly as you need them (generalizing) tends to lead to wasting them.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
Most people tend to throw them around as if they are candy.
What, like they're cheap? :rolleyes:
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Maybe I should start a Variable Financing company.
Jeremy Falcon
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Christian Graus wrote:
I think it's good form to declare variables where you're going to use them, to limit their scope.
Me too, and C doesn't stop you from doing that. Every block has their own scope. If you need to limit the scope of a variable then surround it in a new block. But, in my experience I've seen that declaring variables on the fly as you need them (generalizing) tends to lead to wasting them.
Jeremy Falcon
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
If you need to limit the scope of a variable then surround it in a new block.
I really wish more people would do that. There are still far too many methods around that start out with a page of local variable definitions. X|
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
If you need to limit the scope of a variable then surround it in a new block.
I really wish more people would do that. There are still far too many methods around that start out with a page of local variable definitions. X|
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Shog9 wrote:
There are still far too many methods around that start out with a page of local variable definitions.
Well, you could look at it like the table of contents for a fine novel. :-D
Jeremy Falcon
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
I installed a floppy drive cable upside down and spent 10 minutes figuring out why it kept corrupting the disk. As for programming I tend to not make silly mistakes. Sure I have my share of simple WTF's but those I usually fix without much fanfare. I suppose my biggest and silliest mistake was my first VB6 app that I was contracted to work. It was so bad that I rewrote most of it for free even though the original satisfied the wording on the contract.
A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." -- Stephen Crane
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Hello A silly question.. Just for the sake of sharing funny memories. What is the most funny, silly, ridiculous programming mistake you ever made??:-D Also if anybody has nice memories from the old times -when the OS was loaded each time from a 5.25" disk-, please post it. I can't seem to remember any of mine at the moment;P, but I'll sure post anything I remember. Regards:rose:
I don't know how silly it is, but several years ago I was reviewing my "bag o' tricks", a C++ class library I'd built up over the years to cover all sorts of things. I kept coming back to a piece of code in one class that really bugged me. It seemed so badly done. There was a cryptic comment about it working, but it still bugged me. Finally, I had enough and spent a day rewriting code until I hit some stumbling blocks and simultaneously started having deja vu about what I was doing. I pressed on until it hit me; I'd tried this before and ended up in the same dead end; I'm not talking a similar dead end, but the exact same intractable problem. This time, after I rolled the code back, I put a comment block that warned me about ever trying to rewrite the code again. * * * The next one wasn't my doing, but too funny to leave out. I was running BoundsChecker on some code and getting horrible resource and memory leaks. I was stunned. Further examination found dozens of "new"s without any "delete"s all done by the same guy, who was otherwise a good developer. Then it hit me: for the previous two years he'd been doing C# programming and when he switched back to C++ he forgot there was no garbage collector. He later confirmed the same thing.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke