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C# Memory Leak Torpedoed Princeton's DARPA Chances

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the omg-a-tumbleweed dept.

nil0lab writes "In a case of 20/20 hindsight, Princeton DARPA Grand Challenge team member Bryan Cattle reflects on how their code failed to forget obstacles it had passed. It was written in Microsoft's C#, which isn't supposed to let you have memory leaks. 'We kept noticing that the computer would begin to bog down after extended periods of driving. This problem was pernicious because it only showed up after 40 minutes to an hour of driving around and collecting obstacles. The computer performance would just gradually slow down until the car just simply stopped responding, usually with the gas pedal down, and would just drive off into the bush until we pulled the plug. We looked through the code on paper, literally line by line, and just couldn't for the life of us imagine what the problem was.'"

8 of 560 comments (clear)

  1. I'll show you mine if you.. by king-manic · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'll show you my perpetual motion machines if you show me your perfect autonomous garbage collector. You go first.

    --
    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    1. Re:I'll show you mine if you.. by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Funny

      Next you'll be telling me that I'm not a nerd and this stuff doesn't matter!!!

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  2. Well, there's your problem! by feepness · · Score: 5, Funny

    We looked through the code on paper, literally line by line, and just couldn't for the life of us imagine what the problem was. This may be the least effective method of debugging in existence.
    1. Re:Well, there's your problem! by johannesg · · Score: 4, Funny

      No no, that would be something along the lines of printing out the code and then throwing darts at the listing to figure out the incorrect line. I hear it is popular in Redmond, although they reputedly use chairs instead of darts.

    2. Re:Well, there's your problem! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      No no, that would be something along the lines of printing out the code and then throwing darts at the listing to figure out the incorrect line. I hear it is popular in Redmond, although they reputedly use chairs instead of darts. That makes sense: Since chairs are larger than darts, you have a much greater chance to hit the bugs.
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Re:Friends do not let Friends use Windows and Driv by Bob54321 · · Score: 4, Funny

    blue screams of death
    Is that a snuff film?
    --
    :(){ :|:& };:
  4. Re:As a C kernel programmer... by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's why there are no memory leaks in C/C++ code [/sarcasm]

  5. Perpetual motion machine vendors by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 4, Funny

    A funny thing happened with during my co-op this summer:

    I was working at a coal-fired power plant which needed a new pollution control device before 2010. There, I would dig through the literature, and try to find suitable products and operating conditions for this device. Anyway, this involved a lot of meetings, conference calls, and business lunches with the suppliers in question.

    Then there was Joe.

    Joe was our Alstom sales rep: portly, humorless, slow to speak and slower to understand. He was also a devote Utahnian.

    Well, one day, we were killing time while waiting on a conference call, my supervisor left the room, and we started talking about universities. Then he dropped the bomb:

    "In my Senior year, I worked on developing perpetual motion machines."

    My supervisor then reentered the room, and we got back to work. I felt like I'd just seen a dancing frog.