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Hubbard Asks FreeBSD Hackers To Rename EDOOFUS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sounds-fair-enough dept.

MobyTurbo writes "Jordan K. Hubbard, on instruction from Apple, had to inform the freebsd-hackers list that the error, pointed to by the error message number named EDOOFUS, must be changed. Several interesting suggestions have been made in the resulting thread."

2 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. A little misleading... by greck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article, it doesn't seem like Apple actually asked Hubbard to do anything, nor does it seem like he's saying it "must be changed"... he's just proactively trying to solve a problem before it forks into a silly headache. No need to inflate the drama of the situation any more than it's already going to be.

  2. Re:This seems typical by cperciva · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The assumption that anyone who makes a mistake is a 'doofus' doens't surprise me much at all.

    I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of this error. EDOOFUS doesn't mean "someone has made a stupid mistake" -- it means "*I* have made a stupid mistake". People aren't editing each others' code to add EDOOFUS; they're using it in their own code.

    Much better than simply writing /* this should never happen */ into your code.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid