Re: Larkins website sucks[was Re: Bill Sux]

On Sun, 04 Sep 2005 19:16:34 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

> On Sun, 04 Sep 2005 20:10:54 -0400, keith <krw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 04 Sep 2005 13:55:14 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 4 Sep 2005 23:05:16 +0100, "john jardine"
>>> <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>"John Woodgate" <jmw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>>>news:dENdGBzOVKGDFwFk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin
>>>>> <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote (in
>>>>> <e76hh1l8fakfti3308vlvcbqvs5t0ja2bq@xxxxxxx>) about 'Larkins website
>>>>> sucks[was Re: Bill Sux]', on Fri, 2 Sep 2005:
>>>>>
>>>>> >Precursor languages were "A" and "B". Too bad they quit so soon. They
>>>>> >could have progressed to a language that had no keywords and was
>>>>> >entirely punctuation. They could have called it "F".
>>>>>
>>>>> I think '.' might be a better name.
>>>>> --
>>>>> Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
>>>>> If everything has been designed, a god designed evolution by natural
>>>>selection.
>>>>> http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk
>>>>
>>>>Having spent last 3 months back engineering the C code in a product range.
>>>>I prefer to think of it as "F$%#*^& *£#%e".
>>>>
>>>
>>> They didn't call it "code" by accident.
>>
>>A very wise man and former manager (and one of the early developers of
>>MVS) had a profound "word" he kept on the top of his black/white board:
>>"Xenocryptophobia" - fear of other's code. I don't like reading my own
>>code after a week, so I comment the crap out of it. Every module has a
>>long "purpose" statement, and every line tries to tell others (and myself)
>>wht the hell it's doing. Yes, it takes time to do, but it takes a lot
>>more time to figure out what the hell happened whent it does (and it will).
>
> Yup. I do that, too. But I don't think that, on the whole, it takes
> time. The act of commenting is a sort of check in itself, and makes
> the code better, and reduces debug time. I hate debugging, so I code
> so that I have to do very little of it.

It takes time. Whether that time is otherwise spent elsewhere is another
issue. I'm told that our programmer productivity on OS types of things
in on the order of one line per day. No, it' snot because there is only
80 characters typed per day, rather that every line is designed to fit in
the overall architecture (and documented with another fifty).

I hate debugging too. While I make numerous mistakes, most are trivial to
find. The just stand out, because there are no branches into la-la-land.
Functions return (or post) status, so it's easy to track back to the
failure. Most are <slap!>, that was certainly dumb!

--
Keith
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Larkins website sucks[was Re: Bill Sux]
    ... > A very wise man and former manager (and one of the early developers of ... so I comment the crap out of it. ... > more time to figure out what the hell happened whent it does (and it ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Larkins website sucks[was Re: Bill Sux]
    ... > A very wise man and former manager (and one of the early developers of ... > more time to figure out what the hell happened whent it does. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Larkins website sucks[was Re: Bill Sux]
    ... >> A very wise man and former manager (and one of the early developers of ... so I comment the crap out of it. ... >> more time to figure out what the hell happened whent it does (and it ... I often use the routine headers ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Larkins website sucks[was Re: Bill Sux]
    ... >>>A very wise man and former manager (and one of the early developers of ... so I comment the crap out of it. ... >>>more time to figure out what the hell happened whent it does. ... I'm told that our programmer productivity on OS types of things ...
    (sci.electronics.design)