Anyway, all these tools are completely functional from the command line, as you'd know if you'd bother to actually read some fucking documentation.
I do use nmake and cl already. I clearly stated I wanted to get away from the MS toolkit. I appreciate that at least you did make a useful comment in addition to the insult. I also explained why I don't like the Borland compiler. I didn't know that the Intel compiler didn't come with headers.
I'd love a good one. I can handle makefiles. I tried the borland free compiler, but can't get even a simple app under 100K (thanks to the forced runtime). LCC is great, but I need C++, not just C. I need one with the Win32 include files, and I need to be able to NOT use the runtime. I own a copy of VC++, but I'd prefer a another compiler so I can at least get my dev environment out from under MS. I would be willing to pay for one; has anyone used the Intel compiler? Of course I'd prefer free. Suggestions anyone?
I'm a programmer; I love numbers and the ease they lend to certain tasks. However, I find the thought of everything I am being represented by a number as dehumanizing as the switch from being called a "customer" to being called a "consumer."
We're not nameless and faceless; we're not a piece of data, even if we're represented by one in a database. But I think this will tip us just that much further to thinking of each other as somehow less than we are.
You're forgetting the Manga Video Castle of Cagliostro DVD...
I know, I left out My Neighbor Totoro too. Sorry:)
Well, not quite the only option. The Miyazaki films are gradually coming out on DVD in Japan; if you can find a region-free player...
I do actually have a region-free player (I got lucky and got one of the AD-600s before they patched the BIOS), but I'm ashamed to admit I don't know Japanese very well, and don't know how to order from a non-English web site. So maybe it's not as bad as I stated. But I would like to be able to order it from somewhere without having to jump through hoops, you know?
Also, it's worth noting that one reason Nausicaa.net denounces piracy is that they sort of have to...
That makes perfect sense, and I really can't fault nausicaa.net for denouncing piracy, but on most of the films listed there, it's clear there's no version sold in the USA. I'm just venting because I'd absolutely buy whatever films came available that had Miyazaki associated with them, and I'm quite willing to pay. I do know where to get pirated versions of them all (don't we all), but I'd rather not steal. However, I'm going to watch the movies I like, even if no one will sell them to me.
There's something just twisted about the way this whole thing works, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I guess they'd be right in saying I don't have the right to watch whatever movie I want, but it still doesn't feel right. It's to the point I'd pay someone to order them from Japan for me because I don't know how.
I first saw a fansub of Nausicaa in the eighties at GenCon, and though already a fan of anime, had never seen something so beautiful. Like many others, I fell in love with it, and wanted more.
Thus the problem. How do you get a copy of a film that no one will distribute here? I'd be thrilled to pay just about any amount of money if someone would just sell the thing. Instead, we're forced to sneak around just to enjoy the art. I wrote Disney a letter thanking them for releasing Mononoke and Kiki (charming movie, even with Phil Hartman's Gigi), and telling them I hoped they would do the same high-quality releases for Miyazaki's other films.
But nothing. We still have their wonderful Mononoke DVD release, and the so-so pan and scan of Kiki, of which every copy I've seen is too bright. They also distributed a widescreen Japanese-language Kiki with English subtitles -- but on VHS only. When I want to see any other Miyazaki films, I have no choice but to view pirated versions.
I know my complaints are old, but they're also current. I am going to watch the movies, even if it means breaking the law. Isn't that a hoot? Having to break the law to watch a family-friendly animated movie. Of course Disney would throw a fit, and Studio Ghibli sure doesn't like it either, but I'm ready, willing, and able to give them money -- even if they want to overcharge -- but they won't sell them!
So is it any wonder that fans of these movies pirate them when there's no legal option for obtaining them? Even Miyazaki fan sites, like http://www.nausicaa.net denounce piracy. But it's sort of two-faced, because that's the only option THEY have for watching the films too. It's very frustrating.
Okay, how many of us, if we were inclined to do something illegal and talk about it or plan it via e-mail, would send messages Carnivore can see anyway? I don't think the criminals are that stupid, at least not those Carnivore puports to be searching for. I would also think the FBI would brag about any collars they made, in part, because of Carnivore. So where are all the terrorists they've captured?
I think that Carnivore is another attempt at monitoring where a scare tactic was used to get it implemented. It doesn't work on those it's intended to work on, but works fine for those that should not be monitored.
Protests *are* the problem. Like acts of terrorism (which if you think about it, are really just protests taken to their logical extreme), they do nothing to promote their cause. When I read a report of a terrorist act or a protest my respect for the cause the protesters were supposedly promoting goes down.
I have to disagree here. Many intelligent protesters I have known have tried the respectable routes first -- letters to politicians, etc.. They only protest as a last resort, and never violently. But then they're lumped in with the yahoos out there for a kick. Protests aren't the problem. The original problem was the problem. A protest is a response to that problem. I don't operate under the illusion that all protesters are vestal saints with virtuous causes -- but sometimes they're right anyway.
Consider the case of globalization -- one one side you have essentially all the economists in the world saying that it will be a wonderful thing, and their arguments are backed up by mathematical models...
Good example -- but if globalization is so great, why isn't it improving us already? There are some very excellent web sites showing the harm of globalization to localities. But as long as the numbers benefit the corporations, no one seems to care.
... Giuliani was certainly the first known fatality of the recent anti-capitalist/anti-globalization protests, though there have been a number of serious injuries.
I'll reply here too that I didn't think before I posted. I have a specific question though about this bit: I usually consider myself pretty skilled at narrowing down net searches to find what I'm looking for, but haven't had good luck with that one. When you say "look up the statistics," where would one go to examine those?
The police and government would counter that they are maintaining public order, not protecting corporations exclusively. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine when "public order" started justifying attacking peaceful protestors and passive resisters with pepper spray.
Yeah, that's what got me mad and then I rambled off my mindless post. My wife didn't even know it had happened and she saw the video when I was watching it, and it set her off too. I have too much probably of an anti-authoritarian vein in me to start with, and seeing that video infuriates me every time. I must admit though I've seen as many videos showing the grace under pressure some cops seem to have as I have videos showing the opposite.
However, their rent-a-cops have no authority off their property - if they try to herd or grab you in the street you have every right to defend yourself by beating the stuffing out of them if neccessary.
Yeah, and when the hired thugs go to far, the corporations that ordered them to perform a certain act hang them out to rot on their own. That pisses me off too.
Police are supposed to defend nonviolent, law-abiding citizens from violent criminal thugs.
And another thing that bothers me is that what some corporations and the government do are never considered violent and non-law-abiding because the damage takes longer to show up. I'd love to see some civil suits against corporate abuse take the tone of criminal suits instead. But I doubt it will happen.
They often do receive such training. How many protesters do?
You're right, of course. When I think of protesters, I think of peaceful sit-ins and sign-carriers. But that really hasn't been the pattern lately. I'd just watched the pepper-spray video again where the cops are torturing sitters, and then I posted here. I forgot the think-first-then-post natural order.
Yes, it is a shame that often no one - most notably most of the protesters - seems to care about the issues.
You're right again. The handful I've attended were because I cared very deeply about what was happening... but was frequently surrounded by people shouting things like "Fuck the assholes up! Death to the Man!" when we were there protesting excessive violence by police.
Everything you've said is correct and true, and I should have stopped to think before I posted. There are a few things that get me riled to the point of slack bloodflow to the brain, and cruelty is one of them. Thanks for responding intelligently to my mindless rambling.
I agree with the gist of your post, and teaching cops conflict resolution might be helpful. The real problem is that protests are viewed as a problem and no one gives a damn about what's being protested. Sometimes the protesters are right, and when one or more of them get hurt, the focus falls on that, and never on the message the protesters were pushing.
Cops are scared of being injured or killed on the job, and there's no doubt a bunch of protesters seem like a threat. I'd personally like to see someone show the number of protestors killed by cops vs. the number of cops killed by protestors. I can't blame the cops for being scared. But the bottom line is, the cops shouldn't be there.
A lot of protests lately have been over corporate actions. What the hell are cops doing protecting the corporations against the point of view of protestors? The cops are following orders -- but who the hell is giving the order? Are corporations paying for protection? If so, where's the protection that goes along with our normal tax dollar payments? Who's protecting the protestors?
Corporations should hire their own security.
I know it's an ugly ramble, but I can spare the karma at the moment, so there it is.
I still disagree. Free speech doesn't mean anyone has to listen nor does it refer to market availability. It means certain words won't get you thrown in jail. I'm not a huge fan of PMRC; parents should know what their kid listens to if for no other reason than to at least know what their kid likes.
However, you can't honestly argue that what Wal Mart chooses to sell or not sell equates to stifling of expression. Whether someone in a small Wal Mart-only town can conveniently purchase an album with explicit lyrics is irrelevant to free speech. The fact remains it is not illegal for them to do so, nor illegal for the artist to produce the work.
I would say no, because the Tipper Gore business was, in a sense, protecting us from ourselves (or so they'd have us believe). The PMRC was about letting parents know explicitely that albums contained whatever language was deemed offensive, and was, in a way, a strike back to the relatively new-at-the-time political correctness. It was about maintaining the appearance of values while not limiting the speech itself.
The DMCA isn't even vaguely in the same vein. It's not trying to help anyone be more aware parents, or anything like that. It's about money and power, not just power.
As a teen in the eighties, I always viewed one of the "explicit lyrics" stickers as a shopping tag, telling me what was likely to irritate adults around me, and went straight for the album. You couldn't get in trouble with the law for having an album with unacceptable words. That's certainly not the case with the DMCA and related laws, though. So while I think it's a decent connection, I don't think the DMCA laws are any sort of outgrowth of the PMRC efforts.
First, the South Park "Underwear Gnomes":
1. Duplicate the.NET Environment
2.
3. Profit!
And secondly, an old cartoon I clipped from Omni Magazine:
A scientist is proudly displaying his solution to a problem. Complicated mathematical expressions cover a chalk-board, but in the middle is a little section marked "and then a miracle occurs".
I think Petreley is right. If Ximian doesn't duplicate Passport, and MS changes the interface, the whole thing is useless as a complete open-source alternative. Sort of like what AOL does to the AIM interface every time they want to lock someone out.
Sucks you got modded down for that comment; you actually have a good point. But then considering the other electromagnetic spectra they're listening for can't travel any faster than the speed of light either, it's sort of the same difference.
I don't think the point is whether the aliens are still there, but whether they were there at all. The other idea is that the signal may not have to have travelled all the way from another system, but may be broadcast locally by travellers.
No. Every time you haven't been bitten, you haven't notice.
You're 100% right of course.
You may also be right about the environments (I work for a shop that creates and sells products, not customer-specific). I have worked in an IT-type shop, but even there speed was a factor, but not to the minute. I also suspect we're talking about differing degrees of bad code. I've worked with web designers cum javascripters, vb guys writing transactional queue systems, java people pretending they're not just building web applets, x86 ASM people reinventing the wheel (and the road), and c++ people coding to Win32. You can bet your ass their levels of checks and errors were vastly different. I've worked with lots and lots of new programmers, too. I'll say this though: If you can write an app in 1 day and fix its problems a month later in 20 minutes, the code must either be trivial or use very high-quality tested existing chunks (which reinforces my point).
...How do you check for a nearly infinite number of failures in a distributed complex system... We use transactions and high level exception handlers; if there is a failure anywhere we roll back the transaction and report the reason to the user...
You're doing precisely what I'm talking about. I don't mean checking every damn variable on every use. I'm talking about checking the parameters as they come in, making sure you haven't overflowed your buffers, and making sure you haven't wrapped your integers. You're at least providing the high-level trap. I'm talking about programmers that don't do that:) We're not in as much disagreement as you think.
It is to me. That one thing or other I've skipped in the past always comes back to bite me. I've never had a boss that pressured me on time once they saw that my code didn't break the thing 6 months later when we were all struggling to fix a few pages that the coder didn't take the time to do it right. Also, that occassional wundercode I've pulled off pretty much buys me whatever time I ask for. I guess it's the old saying : Fast, Good, Cheap; pick any two. My way certainly isn't the only way, but I can never pick the check to leave out, because I can't always conceive what the person that uses my code will do with it.
Once in a while I get burned by that long lived program or scope creap that I underestimated and end up with a big program that should of had the checks in place.
And that's why i always build the checks in first. The time saved up front has never, ever, been worth it.
In some situations where I've gone into an existing program, the checks were wrong simply because there was so much code that the developers got lost and ended up with crap.
And thus one of my points. They weren't doing quality work. If they were, the burn would have been much smaller or non-existent.
I understand what you're saying, though. Throw-away code can be written with throw-away techniques. I'm just particularly bad at knowing in advance what's going to be throw-away code.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have generically insulted comp-sci like that; it's probably more because of personal laziness in programmers. It's actual work to test all parameters, provide traps for all exception points, and then remove everything unneccesary and test like hell. It doesn't feel like part of solving the problem, and isn't fun. That's where the bugs come from, imho.
However, I still agree with you on the curricula probably being still experimental by neccesity of the comparitive newness of the subject. I'd love to see a class on quality coding practices in general though.
You're right. I'm never specific enough when I mouth off. I think bugs are more common (and thus worse) than malformed feature sets, and bugs are clearly the fault of the programmers. That's what I meant, and tried to keep it so short I wound up not actually saying so.
I could be wrong about the comp-sci bit. Maybe it's the lack of comp-sci that does it. When I think of the 10 worst programmers I've known, 7 of them had comp sci degrees, though. On the other hand, to be fair, of the 10 best I personally know, 6 have comp sci degrees (and the top three all have them). So it's probably just laziness in general, and has nothing to do with comp sci.
I also overspoke. Good programs require more than good code (as someone else pointed out). They also require correct design and the correct feature set. I guess I subscribe to the preferences of "as few features as possible". But still, I think bugs are worse, and more prevalent, than feature sets that are too small, and that blame lies squarely with the programmers.
If programmers wrote solid code and tested it thoroughly, it would not take ten years to produce truly good software. I see more unchecked parameters, non-tested failure conditions, and badly designed function interfaces now in the work of the average programmer than ever before. I'm not sure who or what to blame for the problem (dare I say comp-sci curricula?), but I suspect part of it lies with the fact that "safe" languages are the first most programmers gain mastery on.
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I do use nmake and cl already. I clearly stated I wanted to get away from the MS toolkit. I appreciate that at least you did make a useful comment in addition to the insult. I also explained why I don't like the Borland compiler. I didn't know that the Intel compiler didn't come with headers.
I'd love a good one. I can handle makefiles. I tried the borland free compiler, but can't get even a simple app under 100K (thanks to the forced runtime). LCC is great, but I need C++, not just C. I need one with the Win32 include files, and I need to be able to NOT use the runtime. I own a copy of VC++, but I'd prefer a another compiler so I can at least get my dev environment out from under MS. I would be willing to pay for one; has anyone used the Intel compiler? Of course I'd prefer free. Suggestions anyone?
I'm a programmer; I love numbers and the ease they lend to certain tasks. However, I find the thought of everything I am being represented by a number as dehumanizing as the switch from being called a "customer" to being called a "consumer."
We're not nameless and faceless; we're not a piece of data, even if we're represented by one in a database. But I think this will tip us just that much further to thinking of each other as somehow less than we are.
I am submitting your name for canonization. You are truly a saint and a hero. Thank you, thank you.
I know, I left out My Neighbor Totoro too. Sorry :)
I do actually have a region-free player (I got lucky and got one of the AD-600s before they patched the BIOS), but I'm ashamed to admit I don't know Japanese very well, and don't know how to order from a non-English web site. So maybe it's not as bad as I stated. But I would like to be able to order it from somewhere without having to jump through hoops, you know?
That makes perfect sense, and I really can't fault nausicaa.net for denouncing piracy, but on most of the films listed there, it's clear there's no version sold in the USA. I'm just venting because I'd absolutely buy whatever films came available that had Miyazaki associated with them, and I'm quite willing to pay. I do know where to get pirated versions of them all (don't we all), but I'd rather not steal. However, I'm going to watch the movies I like, even if no one will sell them to me.
There's something just twisted about the way this whole thing works, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I guess they'd be right in saying I don't have the right to watch whatever movie I want, but it still doesn't feel right. It's to the point I'd pay someone to order them from Japan for me because I don't know how.
I first saw a fansub of Nausicaa in the eighties at GenCon, and though already a fan of anime, had never seen something so beautiful. Like many others, I fell in love with it, and wanted more.
Thus the problem. How do you get a copy of a film that no one will distribute here? I'd be thrilled to pay just about any amount of money if someone would just sell the thing. Instead, we're forced to sneak around just to enjoy the art. I wrote Disney a letter thanking them for releasing Mononoke and Kiki (charming movie, even with Phil Hartman's Gigi), and telling them I hoped they would do the same high-quality releases for Miyazaki's other films.
But nothing. We still have their wonderful Mononoke DVD release, and the so-so pan and scan of Kiki, of which every copy I've seen is too bright. They also distributed a widescreen Japanese-language Kiki with English subtitles -- but on VHS only. When I want to see any other Miyazaki films, I have no choice but to view pirated versions.
I know my complaints are old, but they're also current. I am going to watch the movies, even if it means breaking the law. Isn't that a hoot? Having to break the law to watch a family-friendly animated movie. Of course Disney would throw a fit, and Studio Ghibli sure doesn't like it either, but I'm ready, willing, and able to give them money -- even if they want to overcharge -- but they won't sell them!
So is it any wonder that fans of these movies pirate them when there's no legal option for obtaining them? Even Miyazaki fan sites, like http://www.nausicaa.net denounce piracy. But it's sort of two-faced, because that's the only option THEY have for watching the films too. It's very frustrating.
Okay, how many of us, if we were inclined to do something illegal and talk about it or plan it via e-mail, would send messages Carnivore can see anyway? I don't think the criminals are that stupid, at least not those Carnivore puports to be searching for. I would also think the FBI would brag about any collars they made, in part, because of Carnivore. So where are all the terrorists they've captured?
I think that Carnivore is another attempt at monitoring where a scare tactic was used to get it implemented. It doesn't work on those it's intended to work on, but works fine for those that should not be monitored.
Now see, my first thoughts were of Babs Bunny.
I have to disagree here. Many intelligent protesters I have known have tried the respectable routes first -- letters to politicians, etc.. They only protest as a last resort, and never violently. But then they're lumped in with the yahoos out there for a kick. Protests aren't the problem. The original problem was the problem. A protest is a response to that problem. I don't operate under the illusion that all protesters are vestal saints with virtuous causes -- but sometimes they're right anyway.
Good example -- but if globalization is so great, why isn't it improving us already? There are some very excellent web sites showing the harm of globalization to localities. But as long as the numbers benefit the corporations, no one seems to care.
I'll reply here too that I didn't think before I posted. I have a specific question though about this bit: I usually consider myself pretty skilled at narrowing down net searches to find what I'm looking for, but haven't had good luck with that one. When you say "look up the statistics," where would one go to examine those?
Yeah, that's what got me mad and then I rambled off my mindless post. My wife didn't even know it had happened and she saw the video when I was watching it, and it set her off too. I have too much probably of an anti-authoritarian vein in me to start with, and seeing that video infuriates me every time. I must admit though I've seen as many videos showing the grace under pressure some cops seem to have as I have videos showing the opposite.
Yeah, and when the hired thugs go to far, the corporations that ordered them to perform a certain act hang them out to rot on their own. That pisses me off too.
And another thing that bothers me is that what some corporations and the government do are never considered violent and non-law-abiding because the damage takes longer to show up. I'd love to see some civil suits against corporate abuse take the tone of criminal suits instead. But I doubt it will happen.
You're right, of course. When I think of protesters, I think of peaceful sit-ins and sign-carriers. But that really hasn't been the pattern lately. I'd just watched the pepper-spray video again where the cops are torturing sitters, and then I posted here. I forgot the think-first-then-post natural order.
You're right again. The handful I've attended were because I cared very deeply about what was happening... but was frequently surrounded by people shouting things like "Fuck the assholes up! Death to the Man!" when we were there protesting excessive violence by police.
Everything you've said is correct and true, and I should have stopped to think before I posted. There are a few things that get me riled to the point of slack bloodflow to the brain, and cruelty is one of them. Thanks for responding intelligently to my mindless rambling.
I agree with the gist of your post, and teaching cops conflict resolution might be helpful. The real problem is that protests are viewed as a problem and no one gives a damn about what's being protested. Sometimes the protesters are right, and when one or more of them get hurt, the focus falls on that, and never on the message the protesters were pushing.
Cops are scared of being injured or killed on the job, and there's no doubt a bunch of protesters seem like a threat. I'd personally like to see someone show the number of protestors killed by cops vs. the number of cops killed by protestors. I can't blame the cops for being scared. But the bottom line is, the cops shouldn't be there.
A lot of protests lately have been over corporate actions. What the hell are cops doing protecting the corporations against the point of view of protestors? The cops are following orders -- but who the hell is giving the order? Are corporations paying for protection? If so, where's the protection that goes along with our normal tax dollar payments? Who's protecting the protestors?
Corporations should hire their own security.
I know it's an ugly ramble, but I can spare the karma at the moment, so there it is.
I still disagree. Free speech doesn't mean anyone has to listen nor does it refer to market availability. It means certain words won't get you thrown in jail. I'm not a huge fan of PMRC; parents should know what their kid listens to if for no other reason than to at least know what their kid likes.
However, you can't honestly argue that what Wal Mart chooses to sell or not sell equates to stifling of expression. Whether someone in a small Wal Mart-only town can conveniently purchase an album with explicit lyrics is irrelevant to free speech. The fact remains it is not illegal for them to do so, nor illegal for the artist to produce the work.
I would say no, because the Tipper Gore business was, in a sense, protecting us from ourselves (or so they'd have us believe). The PMRC was about letting parents know explicitely that albums contained whatever language was deemed offensive, and was, in a way, a strike back to the relatively new-at-the-time political correctness. It was about maintaining the appearance of values while not limiting the speech itself.
The DMCA isn't even vaguely in the same vein. It's not trying to help anyone be more aware parents, or anything like that. It's about money and power, not just power.
As a teen in the eighties, I always viewed one of the "explicit lyrics" stickers as a shopping tag, telling me what was likely to irritate adults around me, and went straight for the album. You couldn't get in trouble with the law for having an album with unacceptable words. That's certainly not the case with the DMCA and related laws, though. So while I think it's a decent connection, I don't think the DMCA laws are any sort of outgrowth of the PMRC efforts.
Some of the long shelf-life Windows programming books:
And a non-Windows goodie I haven't seen mentioned:
First, the South Park "Underwear Gnomes": .NET Environment
1. Duplicate the
2.
3. Profit!
And secondly, an old cartoon I clipped from Omni Magazine:
A scientist is proudly displaying his solution to a problem. Complicated mathematical expressions cover a chalk-board, but in the middle is a little section marked "and then a miracle occurs".
I think Petreley is right. If Ximian doesn't duplicate Passport, and MS changes the interface, the whole thing is useless as a complete open-source alternative. Sort of like what AOL does to the AIM interface every time they want to lock someone out.
Sucks you got modded down for that comment; you actually have a good point. But then considering the other electromagnetic spectra they're listening for can't travel any faster than the speed of light either, it's sort of the same difference.
I don't think the point is whether the aliens are still there, but whether they were there at all. The other idea is that the signal may not have to have travelled all the way from another system, but may be broadcast locally by travellers.
No. Every time you haven't been bitten, you haven't notice.
You're 100% right of course.
You may also be right about the environments (I work for a shop that creates and sells products, not customer-specific). I have worked in an IT-type shop, but even there speed was a factor, but not to the minute. I also suspect we're talking about differing degrees of bad code. I've worked with web designers cum javascripters, vb guys writing transactional queue systems, java people pretending they're not just building web applets, x86 ASM people reinventing the wheel (and the road), and c++ people coding to Win32. You can bet your ass their levels of checks and errors were vastly different. I've worked with lots and lots of new programmers, too. I'll say this though: If you can write an app in 1 day and fix its problems a month later in 20 minutes, the code must either be trivial or use very high-quality tested existing chunks (which reinforces my point).
You're doing precisely what I'm talking about. I don't mean checking every damn variable on every use. I'm talking about checking the parameters as they come in, making sure you haven't overflowed your buffers, and making sure you haven't wrapped your integers. You're at least providing the high-level trap. I'm talking about programmers that don't do that :) We're not in as much disagreement as you think.
The book you linked is *fantastic*. I've read it twice.
It isn't always worth it.
It is to me. That one thing or other I've skipped in the past always comes back to bite me. I've never had a boss that pressured me on time once they saw that my code didn't break the thing 6 months later when we were all struggling to fix a few pages that the coder didn't take the time to do it right. Also, that occassional wundercode I've pulled off pretty much buys me whatever time I ask for. I guess it's the old saying : Fast, Good, Cheap; pick any two. My way certainly isn't the only way, but I can never pick the check to leave out, because I can't always conceive what the person that uses my code will do with it.
Once in a while I get burned by that long lived program or scope creap that I underestimated and end up with a big program that should of had the checks in place.
And that's why i always build the checks in first. The time saved up front has never, ever, been worth it.
In some situations where I've gone into an existing program, the checks were wrong simply because there was so much code that the developers got lost and ended up with crap.
And thus one of my points. They weren't doing quality work. If they were, the burn would have been much smaller or non-existent.
I understand what you're saying, though. Throw-away code can be written with throw-away techniques. I'm just particularly bad at knowing in advance what's going to be throw-away code.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have generically insulted comp-sci like that; it's probably more because of personal laziness in programmers. It's actual work to test all parameters, provide traps for all exception points, and then remove everything unneccesary and test like hell. It doesn't feel like part of solving the problem, and isn't fun. That's where the bugs come from, imho.
However, I still agree with you on the curricula probably being still experimental by neccesity of the comparitive newness of the subject. I'd love to see a class on quality coding practices in general though.
You're right. I'm never specific enough when I mouth off. I think bugs are more common (and thus worse) than malformed feature sets, and bugs are clearly the fault of the programmers. That's what I meant, and tried to keep it so short I wound up not actually saying so.
I could be wrong about the comp-sci bit. Maybe it's the lack of comp-sci that does it. When I think of the 10 worst programmers I've known, 7 of them had comp sci degrees, though. On the other hand, to be fair, of the 10 best I personally know, 6 have comp sci degrees (and the top three all have them). So it's probably just laziness in general, and has nothing to do with comp sci.
I also overspoke. Good programs require more than good code (as someone else pointed out). They also require correct design and the correct feature set. I guess I subscribe to the preferences of "as few features as possible". But still, I think bugs are worse, and more prevalent, than feature sets that are too small, and that blame lies squarely with the programmers.
If programmers wrote solid code and tested it thoroughly, it would not take ten years to produce truly good software. I see more unchecked parameters, non-tested failure conditions, and badly designed function interfaces now in the work of the average programmer than ever before. I'm not sure who or what to blame for the problem (dare I say comp-sci curricula?), but I suspect part of it lies with the fact that "safe" languages are the first most programmers gain mastery on.
Since the original post was so nice to not actually link to the awards, here it is: http://www.webbyawards.com/main/.