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Does Your Debugger Sing to You?
ZahrGnosis writes "TRN Mag Online is carrying an article titled Programming tool makes bugs sing. '[The researchers] set up software that mapped pitch and melodic contour information to structural elements in the programming language Pascal. "[We] aimed to see if information about the structure of Pascal programs could be communicated using such musical phrases".' They even found a practical application for software debugging."
I'll program so badly it'll end up sounding like Aphex Twin
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Bug in the program - P.U.!
Somebody wrote it - THATS YOU!
Yes, my debugger _does_ sing as it smites bugs!
namely:
"Another one bytes the dust. Another one bytes the dust. And another and and another bug bytes the dust."
For those of you who need the background music, think Queen, or uh, I guess Weird Al Yankovic
PDHoss
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
>They even found a practical application for software debugging
It's good to know that software debugging has a practical application.
Ninety-nine off-by-one bugs in the code,
Ninety-nine off-by-one bugs,
Take one down,
Fix it up,
One hundred off-by-one bugs in the code!
-Joe
Lose = not win
I wonder if they could create an interface that would allow you to fix bugs by dancing?
Gnu Debugger, the real Dance Dance Revolution?
Haha, only parlty serious. Just as we need new ways to "view" information, it could also be helpful to be able to respond in a way that goes beyond the keyboard and mouse.
byroniverse
You think that's bad? The .NET code samples play The Imperial March.
The musical sound of Windows blue-screening.
You could even have a nice menu:
Select your musical preference:
1) Death-metal guitars
2) Funeral dirge
3) Cat-in-heat-at-12:00-am
Ohhh, the possibilities....
It would be better than the anguished "NOOOOOO!" frequently heard around the office.
The UPS Debugger Song: "Just One More Hack (and then I'll put it on the 'net)
(Ah, thank you Google, for the historical reference to first puclication!) UPS - The Song!"
My debuger sings and my IDE tells me to kill people.
But wait..... I've said to much.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Back when I first started experimenting with full-screen graphics programming, I went through a phase where I could switch screen modes, but not get anything to show up. This meant that I had no way to print diagnostic messages to the screen to figure out when something went wrong. The solution was to play sounds to track the progress of the program and report error conditions.
"Oh, the program went Boink-Ding and Bloop, but not Clunk... that must mean that palette creation failed!"
If I combine this with the morse code panic patch, I could have my own techno dance studio! Flashing lights and all!
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
A singing debugger can't be worse than Britney spears.
In the news, the VC++ debugger has come under fire from the RIAA for producing melodic tunes that sound very similar to several copyrighted materials.
"Whoever wrote the code that produced these tunes, we want to find them and bring them to justice." said Hillary Rosen, of the RIAA. "Neither Microsoft, nor the developer in question, has paid royalties to the artists whose songs they have violated. Renegade debuggers must be stopped, for they pose the greatest threat to the artists' intellectual property we've ever seen!"
<sigh> Fact is often stranger than fiction
"Buffer Overflow in C#"
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
I've noticed several folks who seem to think this is silly, dumb, etc. I don't think it is. Think back to the days (if you're old enough) of monochrome displays. Even the addition of a few colors made it easier to process information by taking advantage of human sensitivity to color in our environment. To say that music, or at least sound, could be incorporated makes sense to me.
.0001 share of Berkshire Hathaway's Class B worth...
Particularly in applications where you're trying to track status over time, having some background that varies with changes can be very helpful (I seem to recall the game Populous using this to good effect to help you get a quick idea of how you were doing overall). In the context of a debugger, having clashing noises that become more melodious as the program gets closer to completion and perhaps also asit comes closer to defined standards seems to bea good motivator.
Just my
Could you run a melody through and have programming structures returned? Metaphors are sunny days.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Well, if you're going to go posting lyrics...
....
This came out years ago, I found a printout of it a couple of days back while going through some papers. Picture Weird Al Yankovich singing this to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (this isn't a Weird Al though, he did "Eat It"):
Boot It
You're processing some words when your keyboard goes dead,
Ten pages in the buffer, should have gone to bed,
The system just crashed, but don't lose your head,
Just BOOT IT, just BOOT IT.
Better think fast, better do what you can,
Read the manual or call your system man,
Don't want to fall behind in the race with Japan,
So BOOT IT,
Get the sys admin to
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Even though you'd rather shoot it.
Don't be upset, it's only some glitch.
All that you do is flip a little switch.
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Get right down and restitute it.
Don't get excited, all is not lost.
CP/M, UNIX or MS-DOS
Just BOOT IT, boot it, boot it, boot it...
You gotta have your printout for the meeting at two,
The system says your jobs at the head of the queue,
Right then the thing dies but you know what to do,
BOOT IT.
You always get so worried when the system runs slow,
And when it finally crashes, man you feel so low,
But computers make mistakes (they're only human you know)
So BOOT IT,
Call the local guru to
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Go ahead re-institute it.
If you're not lucky, get the book off the shelf,
But if you are, it'll do itself.
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Then go find the guy who screwed it! Operating systems are built to bounce back,
Whether it's a Cray or a Radio Shack.
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Sorry I don't know who deserves the attributes for that.
-- Alastair
(* Bug in the program - P.U.! *)
That's it! Associate *smells* with bugs.
Stack_overflow_error ==> Dirty_Socks_Smell
That will encourage programmers be more careful. Then again, single programmers are probably use to all those smells anyhow.
Nevermind.
Table-ized A.I.
I sometimes sing to my debugger:
---
Hello bluescreen my old friend,
You are my program's bitter end.
All my random poke and peeking,
Didn't stop the memory leaking.
And the Interrupt, I set so long a go,
did never throw...
My only option... is viloence.
Slam the mouse in to the desk.
Pound the keys and beat my chest.
Do what I say not what I mean,
Open the window, thow out this machine.
And as it falls, and crashes on the street
Debugging complete
my only option... was violence.
Krispy Cream is people
With Palladium, I suspect that there will be more variety. Normally, it will still be "Money" at about 120db, but if you click on an mp3, you'll hear the "Dragnet" theme and sounds of wailing police sirens followed by the Monty Python ditty "There's Nothing Quite as Wonderful as Money".
Sigs are bad for your health.
I'll take that as a challenge.
And now introducing:
TASTE-BASED DEBUGGING!
You'll never miss another semi-colon after one spoiled milk dose!
Infinite loops will fade into myths after the first few developers get a taste of dead-fish-left-in-the-sun-for-a-week.
And for those minor offenses such as not commenting code and choosing horrible names? A few times through with the Taste'O'Soap and you'll be cured for life!
This project brought to you by the Federal Government. Always looking for more ways to make your life unpleasant.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
There were also programs designed just to place music on the radio with their EMI.