Worst part of debugging my own code
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
That's the reason I don't read comments and only rarely write them :D
Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra
Regards, Sander
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
especially when going round and round doing the same thing and believe it will work :((
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
As an old timer in the world of programming (feed-register-release), I learned that I really cannot debug my own code - and one reason is a constant background process that simply removes thoughts about doing stupid and unexpected things to the application. Over the years, like the rest of us, I spend a lot of effort handling boundary conditions in an attempt to foil user attempts at getting my attention. I comment all over the place - honestly, I'll admit - but sometimes what seemed so clear so long ago was apparently gibberish, after all. Oddly, I don't remember being drunk at the time. So - if I'm fortunate, someone will bang on it before it goes live, looking for problems. Describing the problem to someone also seems to work as I rephrase into the common speech. But - the bottom line is that, when you wrote and released the work, you didn't leave any bugs you knew about in it (or do you work for MicroSoft?) - so why should they be easy to spot now? If they were they'd never have gotten by to begin with. Disclaimer: the preceding was a fantasy of how I pretend I work. Any resemblance to any code that has gone live or is in beta is purely coincidental and probably a figment of both of our imaginations.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
No such things as bugs - they are referred to as "undocumented product characteristics".
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
This why I don't generally comment my code. :) Once in a while I will, if it's a case of a brief explanation of an unusual algorithm, or it's not obvious as to why I did something. I adamantly refuse to comment what code is doing, except with regard to the XML comments on library code. Yes, I'm one of those people.
Currently reading: "The Two Towers", by J.R.R. Tolkien
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
Quote:
Except they are lies: damn lies.
Do you have any statistics on that? ;)
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
Try not to be too hard on yourself, you were doing it for your own good... :~ :laugh:
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On the plus side, shows that you're continuing to improve as a developer. Seems as if every time I review something from (say) six months ago, it's "what was I thinking?"
Reading comments from 10 years ago is like finding an old diary. Sometimes you think "What was I smoking when I wrote that?" and other times you just chuckle at how naive you were. .
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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I've realised that I lie to myself in code. My comments on why a piece of logic is as it is sound so very convincing and reasonable. Except they are lies: damn lies. I need to sit down and have a word to myself, I think.
cheers Chris Maunder
I have recently begun extensively commenting my code, and discovered that it is a wonderful way to de-bug it. I write the code first, then go back and comment it testing to make sure it is really doing what I expected. Now I know purists out there will say I am doing it Bass-ackwards, but it works really well for me. ;P
