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digitalmars.D - Patterns of Bugs

reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

(dedicated to bearophile!)

Anyone want to post it on reddit?
Jan 06 2011
next sibling parent BlazingWhitester <max.klyga gmail.com> writes:
On 2011-01-06 21:38:38 +0200, Walter Bright said:


 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html
 
 (dedicated to bearophile!)
 
 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/exfnb/patterns_of_bugs/

done!
Jan 06 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:ig55s4$1uc3$1 digitalmars.com...

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


I noticed that C-style octal literals were conspicuously absent from the 
examples ;)

Great article, though. Having been in D-land for so long, and being a 
long-time hardcore fan of the classic book "Writing Solid Code", the 
principles seem fairly obvious to me. But it's definitely something to pass 
along to other people.
Jan 06 2011
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 I noticed that C-style octal literals were conspicuously absent from the 
 examples ;)


Everyone has their favorite pattern. I could literally list thousands of them.



 Great article, though. Having been in D-land for so long, and being a 
 long-time hardcore fan of the classic book "Writing Solid Code", the 
 principles seem fairly obvious to me. But it's definitely something to pass 
 along to other people.


I think it's obvious, too, but it ain't. Just work on a car for a while, and 
you'll see!
Jan 06 2011
prev sibling parent reply JMRyan <nospam nospam.com> writes:
"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in news:ig5860$231t$1 digitalmars.com:


 long-time hardcore fan of the classic book "Writing Solid Code", the 


Although the book is justifiably a classic, its subtitle is the very 
definition of the expression "unintentionally hilarious".
Jan 06 2011
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"JMRyan" <nospam nospam.com> wrote in message 
news:ig6cjg$u8n$1 digitalmars.com...

 "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in news:ig5860$231t$1 digitalmars.com:


 long-time hardcore fan of the classic book "Writing Solid Code", the


 Although the book is justifiably a classic, its subtitle is the very
 definition of the expression "unintentionally hilarious".


Heh, that is an excellent point. Although more seriously, there's no doubt 
in my mind that at least a few programmers must have avoided the book out of 
the skepticism of "A book about code reliability...from *Microsoft* 
Press???"
Jan 07 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Robert Clipsham <robert octarineparrot.com> writes:
On 06/01/11 19:38, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


"It's too bad there doesn't seem to be an online repository of them. 
They would make for great research material for programming language 
designers. Every one you can design out of existence will incrementally 
improve the productivity of programmers."

Perhaps someone here would like to volunteer for this? I guess some kind 
of moderated bugzilla would do the trick, it'd be awesome to have some 
table of languages and how many of the types bugs they prevent/kind of 
prevent as well.

If no one else volunteers I guess I could hack something crude together, 
it would still need people to volunteer bugs for it, as well as 
sources/proof for each bug (links to changesets/projects that have 
encountered this issue etc).

-- 
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/
Jan 06 2011
parent reply Guilherme Vieira <n2.nitrogen gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Robert Clipsham
<robert octarineparrot.com>wrote:


 On 06/01/11 19:38, Walter Bright wrote:


 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


 "It's too bad there doesn't seem to be an online repository of them. They
 would make for great research material for programming language designers.
 Every one you can design out of existence will incrementally improve the
 productivity of programmers."

 Perhaps someone here would like to volunteer for this? I guess some kind of
 moderated bugzilla would do the trick, it'd be awesome to have some table of
 languages and how many of the types bugs they prevent/kind of prevent as
 well.

 If no one else volunteers I guess I could hack something crude together, it
 would still need people to volunteer bugs for it, as well as sources/proof
 for each bug (links to changesets/projects that have encountered this issue
 etc).

 --
 Robert
 http://octarineparrot.com/


I loved the idea, but I personally dislike Bugzilla and I wonder if it would
work for something like that. Anyway a voting system would be mandatory.

In any case, isn't there something like this already?

-- 
Atenciosamente / Sincerely,
Guilherme ("n2liquid") Vieira
Jan 06 2011
parent Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> writes:
Am 06.01.2011 21:37, schrieb Guilherme Vieira:

 On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Robert Clipsham <robert octarineparrot.com
 <mailto:robert octarineparrot.com>> wrote:

     On 06/01/11 19:38, Walter Bright wrote:

         http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

         (dedicated to bearophile!)

         Anyone want to post it on reddit?


     "It's too bad there doesn't seem to be an online repository of them. They
     would make for great research material for programming language designers.
     Every one you can design out of existence will incrementally improve the
     productivity of programmers."

     Perhaps someone here would like to volunteer for this? I guess some kind of
     moderated bugzilla would do the trick, it'd be awesome to have some table
of
     languages and how many of the types bugs they prevent/kind of prevent as
well.

     If no one else volunteers I guess I could hack something crude together, it
     would still need people to volunteer bugs for it, as well as sources/proof
     for each bug (links to changesets/projects that have encountered this issue
     etc).

     --
     Robert
     http://octarineparrot.com/


 I loved the idea, but I personally dislike Bugzilla and I wonder if it would
 work for something like that. Anyway a voting system would be mandatory.

 In any case, isn't there something like this already?


I don't think Bugzilla would be appropriate, because such a repository should 
collect bugs from many different projects.
Something that allows to sort the bugs into categories etc is needed IMHO.
So you'd have rough categories of bugs, sub-(sub-sub-)categories of that and at 
some point links to the actual bugs in the respective bugtrackers of the 
monitored projects.

Of course support for that in various bugtrackers would be great, so the 
bugfixer could just select the appropriate (sub)category of the bug and it
would 
automatically be submitted to the repository.

Cheers,
- Daniel
Jan 06 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Walter:


 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html
 (dedicated to bearophile!)


Thank you Walter :-)
The article is simple but nice. Few comments:



 The possible mechanic's mistake is designed out of the system.


In the first books written by Donald Norman there are many examples of wrong
design, "foolproof" design, etc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman



 (!E && !E->fld)
 is a nonsense expression, and what was probably meant was:
 (!E || !E->fld)
 
 What's the process fix for this bug pattern?


Even the correct version is not nice code :-)



In the D programming language, we didn't wish to mess with the operator
precedences in order to avoid behavior that would be surprising to experienced
programmers.<


Experienced _C_ programmers (as you written below) :-)



 A common pattern is the classic fencepost bug:
 int A[10];
 for (int i = 0; i <= 10; i++)
 ... = A[i];



This little C99 program:

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    int A[10] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9};
    int total = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i <= 10; i++)
      total += A[i]; // line 6
    printf("%d\n", total);
    return 0;
}


The good Gimpel lint catches the bug statically:

diy.c  6  Warning 661:  Possible access of out-of-bounds pointer (1 beyond end
of data) by operator '[' [Reference: file diy.c: lines 5, 6]

It's able to catch more complex situations too (but not all situations).

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 06 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips+D gmail.com> writes:
Guilherme Vieira Wrote:


 On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Robert Clipsham
 <robert octarineparrot.com>wrote:


 If no one else volunteers I guess I could hack something crude together, it
 would still need people to volunteer bugs for it, as well as sources/proof
 for each bug (links to changesets/projects that have encountered this issue
 etc).

 I loved the idea, but I personally dislike Bugzilla and I wonder if it would


 work for something like that. Anyway a voting system would be mandatory.
 
 In any case, isn't there something like this already?


I don't see much benefit in building a "crude" prototype for such a system. If
it is going to be done the person should really run with the idea; research
what tools are out their for managing a system and doing what it takes to make
a usable, friendly, and meaningful implementation.

Modifications to analysis tools could be made which would crawl public
repositories looking for known patterns (not to claim it is a bug), similar to
Ohloh and its crawling tools.
Jan 06 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Max Samukha <spambox d-coding.com> writes:
On 01/06/2011 09:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


Good points. However, computer hardware analogies are a bit outdated. 
For example, USB is prevalent nowadays. You connect a USB keyboard, 
mouse or whatever to a slot, which is closest to you and forget about 
it. Also, memory module connectors are incompatible starting from I 
believe DDR. You won't be able to stick DDR2 module into DDR slot. 
Actually, this applies to almost any modern PC component.

I'm afraid the principles you are describing are not something new in 
the software industry. I can't remember the first time I heard the term 
"fool-proof software".
Jan 07 2011
next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Max Samukha" <spambox d-coding.com> wrote in message 
news:ig7jqi$1mfe$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 01/06/2011 09:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


 Good points. However, computer hardware analogies are a bit outdated. For 
 example, USB is prevalent nowadays. You connect a USB keyboard, mouse or 
 whatever to a slot, which is closest to you and forget about it. Also, 
 memory module connectors are incompatible starting from I believe DDR. You 
 won't be able to stick DDR2 module into DDR slot. Actually, this applies 
 to almost any modern PC component.


Also, I'm pretty sure that, quite a while ago, the PS/2 ports did start 
getting made to work with either keyboard or mouse even though they often 
still got labeled as being just one or the other. And I can't think of a 
component in my system that isn't keyed but should be. Even IDE ports/plugs 
started getting keyed a long time ago. But yea, audio-in versus audio-out is 
still one notable case where you can put the wrong thing in the wrong place. 
Although, most speakers/headphones do actually work as low-quality 
microphones :)
Jan 07 2011
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Also, I'm pretty sure that, quite a while ago, the PS/2 ports did start 
 getting made to work with either keyboard or mouse even though they often 
 still got labeled as being just one or the other.


Last time I tried that, it didn't work.
Jan 07 2011
parent Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips+D gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:


 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Also, I'm pretty sure that, quite a while ago, the PS/2 ports did start 
 getting made to work with either keyboard or mouse even though they often 
 still got labeled as being just one or the other.


 
 Last time I tried that, it didn't work.


You can't just try it on the same old hardware...

It works for me, though I don't have a PS/2 mouse anymore to try it this
instant. I know many laptops have come with a single PS/2 slot which accepts
either.
Jan 07 2011
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Max Samukha wrote:

 On 01/06/2011 09:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


 
 Good points. However, computer hardware analogies are a bit outdated. 
 For example, USB is prevalent nowadays. You connect a USB keyboard, 
 mouse or whatever to a slot, which is closest to you and forget about 
 it.


Yes, USB is a big improvement. So is SATA.



 Also, memory module connectors are incompatible starting from I 
 believe DDR. You won't be able to stick DDR2 module into DDR slot. 
 Actually, this applies to almost any modern PC component.


I put together a new box a couple weeks ago. The memory card would fit in one
of 
4 slots. The first one I tried it in resulted in a computer that just beeped at 
me. No help from the manual at all, I was ready to RMA the mobo back, until I 
had the idea of putting the card in a different slot. The second one I tried
worked.

You're right that many things in the computer hardware are better. But still, 
many connections to the mobo can be done wrong. For example, all the pins
coming 
from the front panel. Some of them, like the hard drive LED, don't even
indicate 
the polarity on the connector, and you have to try it both ways until you
figure 
out which one works.



 I'm afraid the principles you are describing are not something new in 
 the software industry. I can't remember the first time I heard the term 
 "fool-proof software".


I'm not saying they are new - heck, trying to eliminate buggy code patterns
goes 
back to trying to get rid of goto. And, of course, many static analysis tools 
attempt to identify obviously buggy but legal C patterns.
Jan 07 2011
next sibling parent Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/7/11, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:

Some of them, like the hard drive LED, don't even
 indicate
 the polarity on the connector..


I hate those things. There's bunch of LEDs on the PC case - USB
indicators, power LEDs, etc, and they all have this super-tiny
connector and they have to be put together in a really tight place on
the motherboard. I leave the PC speaker disconnected though, who needs
that thing anyway? :p

AFAIK most of the new motherboards use a different color for the PS/2
keyboard vs mouse connectors, so it's not as if the PC industry is
ignoring those problems.
Jan 07 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:47:43 -0500, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 Max Samukha wrote:

 Also, memory module connectors are incompatible starting from I believe  
 DDR. You won't be able to stick DDR2 module into DDR slot. Actually,  
 this applies to almost any modern PC component.


 I put together a new box a couple weeks ago. The memory card would fit  
 in one of 4 slots. The first one I tried it in resulted in a computer  
 that just beeped at me. No help from the manual at all, I was ready to  
 RMA the mobo back, until I had the idea of putting the card in a  
 different slot. The second one I tried worked.


That is not because the slot doesn't support the dimm, it is because many  
chipsets require you populate memory in a specific order.  Usually the  
slots are color coded (blue and black for instance) to indicate which  
slots should go together (some chipsets require pairs of dimms), they are  
usually labeled with silkscreen to indicate the order.  I think I've even  
seen silkscreened instructions on which to populate first.  It sucks that  
the manual doesn't help you.

BTW, the beep is usually an indicator of a POST code.  It's because it  
cannot access the memory, so it can't run the graphics card, the beep is  
the only way it can communicate ;)  I think (but I'm not sure) that the  
beeps convey the code, but the easiest way to figure out the code is to  
plug in a POST card.


 You're right that many things in the computer hardware are better. But  
 still, many connections to the mobo can be done wrong. For example, all  
 the pins coming from the front panel. Some of them, like the hard drive  
 LED, don't even indicate the polarity on the connector, and you have to  
 try it both ways until you figure out which one works.


Typically, those are not keyed because it's not expected for a normal user  
to be accessing those cables.  Removing the cover of a PC is like casting  
in D :)

-Steve
Jan 07 2011
parent Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Friday, January 07, 2011 11:07:54 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 Typically, those are not keyed because it's not expected for a normal user
 to be accessing those cables.  Removing the cover of a PC is like casting
 in D :)


LOL. Yeah. Every time that I build a box, I think about how it would really be 
nice if they standardized them better and made it much easier to just plug
stuff 
in without all of the cables floating around in the box. But that would make
them 
cost more money, and since you don't actually have to mess with them that
often, 
it just isn't worth it. It sure would be nice though.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jan 07 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Friday, January 07, 2011 11:06:23 Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/7/11, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:

Some of them, like the hard drive LED, don't even

 indicate
 the polarity on the connector..


 
 I hate those things. There's bunch of LEDs on the PC case - USB
 indicators, power LEDs, etc, and they all have this super-tiny
 connector and they have to be put together in a really tight place on
 the motherboard. I leave the PC speaker disconnected though, who needs
 that thing anyway? :p


It's useful for informing you that the computer is starting correctly and gives 
you an idea of what's wrong if it isn't (though you can live without that if
the 
computer seems to be okay). It's also useful for things like for when your CPU 
is getting too warm. However, I think that it's horrific that anything in the
OS 
or any program on the computer at all uses the PC speaker. It is _annoying_
when 
the command-line of all things starts beeping at you because you hit backspace 
too many times or something like that. At the moment, I haven't been
configuring 
my kernel recently (which is _not_ a fun thing to have to keep doing on every 
kernel update IMHO), but when I was, I specifically did _not_ compile in the PC 
speaker driver. I wish that that were the norm. Which reminds me, while the PC 
speaker is disabled in KDE, I really need to go and track down which change I 
need to make where to silence it when I've booted to the console rather than
all 
the way into KDE...

- Jonathan M Davis
Jan 07 2011
parent reply =?UTF-8?B?IkrDqXLDtG1lIE0uIEJlcmdlciI=?= <jeberger free.fr> writes:
Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Friday, January 07, 2011 11:06:23 Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/7/11, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:

 Some of them, like the hard drive LED, don't even

 indicate
 the polarity on the connector..


 I hate those things. There's bunch of LEDs on the PC case - USB
 indicators, power LEDs, etc, and they all have this super-tiny
 connector and they have to be put together in a really tight place on
 the motherboard. I leave the PC speaker disconnected though, who needs=





 that thing anyway? :p


=20
 It's useful for informing you that the computer is starting correctly a=


nd gives=20

 you an idea of what's wrong if it isn't (though you can live without th=


at if the=20

 computer seems to be okay). It's also useful for things like for when y=


our CPU=20

 is getting too warm. However, I think that it's horrific that anything =


in the OS=20

 or any program on the computer at all uses the PC speaker. It is _annoy=


ing_ when=20

 the command-line of all things starts beeping at you because you hit ba=


ckspace=20

 too many times or something like that. At the moment, I haven't been co=


nfiguring=20

 my kernel recently (which is _not_ a fun thing to have to keep doing on=


 every=20

 kernel update IMHO), but when I was, I specifically did _not_ compile i=


n the PC=20

 speaker driver. I wish that that were the norm. Which reminds me, while=


 the PC=20

 speaker is disabled in KDE, I really need to go and track down which ch=


ange I=20

 need to make where to silence it when I've booted to the console rather=


 than all=20

 the way into KDE...
=20


	When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use
speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)

		Jerome
--=20
mailto:jeberger free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger jabber.fr
Jan 07 2011
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

 	When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use
 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which is what I
got.
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Saturday 08 January 2011 00:16:13 Walter Bright wrote:

 J=C3=A9r=C3=B4me M. Berger wrote:

 	When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use
=20
 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


=20
 That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which is wh=


at

 I got.


LOL. The beeps for mine are documented in the motherboadr manual, but the b=
eeps=20
are so hard to distinguish from one another, that it borders on useless. A =
voice=20
would certainly be better.

=2D Jonathan M Davis
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Saturday 08 January 2011 00:16:13 Walter Bright wrote:

 Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

 	When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use

 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


 That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which is what
 I got.


 
 LOL. The beeps for mine are documented in the motherboadr manual, but the
beeps 
 are so hard to distinguish from one another, that it borders on useless. A
voice 
 would certainly be better.


Yes, what is the difference between a "slow beep" and a "fast beep"?

While I'm ranting, does anyone else have trouble remembering which of O and |
is 
on, and which is off? What's the matter with "on" and "off"?
Jan 08 2011
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Saturday 08 January 2011 01:14:41 Walter Bright wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Saturday 08 January 2011 00:16:13 Walter Bright wrote:

 J=C3=A9r=C3=B4me M. Berger wrote:

 	When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use
=20
 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


=20
 That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which is
 what I got.


=20
 LOL. The beeps for mine are documented in the motherboadr manual, but t=




he

 beeps are so hard to distinguish from one another, that it borders on
 useless. A voice would certainly be better.


=20
 Yes, what is the difference between a "slow beep" and a "fast beep"?
=20
 While I'm ranting, does anyone else have trouble remembering which of O a=


nd

 | is on, and which is off? What's the matter with "on" and "off"?


I didn't even find out that the sign on many power switches was a 1 inside =
a 0=20
until recently, so the symbols meant nothing to me. I would _assume_ that 1=
=20
means on and 0 means off since a bit that's 1 is on/true and a bit that's 0=
 is=20
off/false (and looking at the power switch on my computer right now, that d=
oes=20
indeed appear to be the case), but I normally have to just guess whether=20
something is on or off if you can't tell from something other than the powe=
r=20
switch. On and Off would be much better, but I suspect that it's one of tho=
se=20
things where they chose symbols instead so that they didn't have to worry a=
bout=20
internationalization. That way, it confuses _everyone_ instead of just non-
English speakers. ;)

=2D Jonathan M Davis
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On and Off would be much better, but I suspect that it's one of those 
 things where they chose symbols instead so that they didn't have to worry
about 
 internationalization. That way, it confuses _everyone_ instead of just non-
 English speakers. ;)


I suspect as much, too, but at least "on" and "off" can be looked up in a 
dictionary. There's no hope for O and |.
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Lutger Blijdestijn <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:


 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On and Off would be much better, but I suspect that it's one of those
 things where they chose symbols instead so that they didn't have to worry
 about internationalization. That way, it confuses _everyone_ instead of
 just non- English speakers. ;)


 
 I suspect as much, too, but at least "on" and "off" can be looked up in a
 dictionary. There's no hope for O and |.


I always assumed they meant 0 and 1. Then it's easy, just put it in an if() 
statement :)
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw ubuntu.com> writes:
== Quote from Lutger Blijdestijn (lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com)'s article

 Walter Bright wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On and Off would be much better, but I suspect that it's one of those
 things where they chose symbols instead so that they didn't have to worry
 about internationalization. That way, it confuses _everyone_ instead of
 just non- English speakers. ;)


 I suspect as much, too, but at least "on" and "off" can be looked up in a
 dictionary. There's no hope for O and |.


 I always assumed they meant 0 and 1. Then it's easy, just put it in an if()
 statement :)


On the note of if statements. One pattern of bugs I see on the odd occasion are
else statements written like this:

if (condition1)
    if (condition2)
        statement1;
    else
        statement2;


Always takes a moment or two to look again and realise it wouldn't work as
expected without the missing braces added. ;)
Jan 08 2011
next sibling parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Iain Buclaw:


 On the note of if statements. One pattern of bugs I see on the odd occasion are
 else statements written like this:
 
 if (condition1)
     if (condition2)
         statement1;
     else
         statement2;
 
 Always takes a moment or two to look again and realise it wouldn't work as
 expected without the missing braces added. ;)


See:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4375
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4924
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4283

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw ubuntu.com> writes:
== Quote from bearophile (bearophileHUGS lycos.com)'s article

 Iain Buclaw:

 On the note of if statements. One pattern of bugs I see on the odd occasion




are

 else statements written like this:

 if (condition1)
     if (condition2)
         statement1;
     else
         statement2;

 Always takes a moment or two to look again and realise it wouldn't work as
 expected without the missing braces added. ;)


 See:
 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4375


Yep, that's the one. :)


 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4924


I don't see that as a bug, and that enforces a certain coding style onto the end
programmer (does no one give thought/praise to obfuscation anymore? ;)


 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4283


That's certainly a nice looking bug there. But not related in the slightest.


Regards
Jan 08 2011
parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Iain Buclaw:


 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4924


 
 I don't see that as a bug, and that enforces a certain coding style onto the
end
 programmer


I agree that's a bit controversial, but a known C lint finds that problem, and
every strategy is good against bugs :-)



 (does no one give thought/praise to obfuscation anymore? ;)


You are right, we have to create a contest site like this for IODCC
(International Obfuscated D Code Contest):
http://www.ioccc.org/
This contest has also caused the creation of that fine piece of software that
is the TCC (Tiny C compiler).



 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4283


 That's certainly a nice looking bug there. But not related in the slightest.


It's related in a sense, it shows an example of a dangling else bug done by the
language too :-)

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 08 2011
prev sibling parent reply torhu <no spam.invalid> writes:
On 08.01.2011 15:13, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 On the note of if statements. One pattern of bugs I see on the odd occasion are
 else statements written like this:

 if (condition1)
      if (condition2)
          statement1;
      else
          statement2;


 Always takes a moment or two to look again and realise it wouldn't work as
 expected without the missing braces added. ;)


But that one would actually work as expected, wouldn't it? ;) The else 
belongs to the second if, which matches your indentation.
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw ubuntu.com> writes:
== Quote from torhu (no spam.invalid)'s article

 On 08.01.2011 15:13, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 On the note of if statements. One pattern of bugs I see on the odd occasion




are

 else statements written like this:

 if (condition1)
      if (condition2)
          statement1;
      else
          statement2;


 Always takes a moment or two to look again and realise it wouldn't work as
 expected without the missing braces added. ;)


 But that one would actually work as expected, wouldn't it? ;) The else
 belongs to the second if, which matches your indentation.


Never let indentation fool you, the else clause will be assumed to be for the
first condition. :o)
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Ellery Newcomer <ellery-newcomer utulsa.edu> writes:
On 01/08/2011 02:37 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 Never let indentation fool you, the else clause will be assumed to be for the
 first condition. :o)


I don't believe you
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw ubuntu.com> writes:
== Quote from Ellery Newcomer (ellery-newcomer utulsa.edu)'s article

 On 01/08/2011 02:37 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 Never let indentation fool you, the else clause will be assumed to be for the
 first condition. :o)


 I don't believe you


Are you saying it *isn't* interpreted as:

if (i)
    if (j)
        printf("J true\n");
else
    printf("I false\n");


:o
Jan 08 2011
next sibling parent Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> writes:
Am 08.01.2011 21:53, schrieb Iain Buclaw:

 == Quote from Ellery Newcomer (ellery-newcomer utulsa.edu)'s article

 On 01/08/2011 02:37 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 Never let indentation fool you, the else clause will be assumed to be for the
 first condition. :o)


 I don't believe you


 Are you saying it *isn't* interpreted as:

 if (i)
      if (j)
          printf("J true\n");
 else
      printf("I false\n");


 :o


(D1 code):
import std.stdio;

void main(string[] args) {
	if(args.length > 1)
		if(args.length > 2)
			writefln("foo");
		else
			writefln("bar");
}

caedes Mancubus:/tmp $ ./test
caedes Mancubus:/tmp $ ./test a
bar
caedes Mancubus:/tmp $ ./test a b
foo
Jan 08 2011
prev sibling parent "Lars T. Kyllingstad" <public kyllingen.NOSPAMnet> writes:
On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 20:53:20 +0000, Iain Buclaw wrote:


 == Quote from Ellery Newcomer (ellery-newcomer utulsa.edu)'s article

 On 01/08/2011 02:37 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 Never let indentation fool you, the else clause will be assumed to be
 for the first condition. :o)


 I don't believe you


 
 Are you saying it *isn't* interpreted as:
 
 if (i)
     if (j)
         printf("J true\n");
 else
     printf("I false\n");
 
 
 :o


From the grammar:

"The 'dangling else' parsing problem is solved by associating the else 
with the nearest if statement."

http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/statement.html#IfStatement

-Lars
Jan 10 2011
prev sibling parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 08/01/2011 09:14, Walter Bright wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Saturday 08 January 2011 00:16:13 Walter Bright wrote:

 Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

 When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use

 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


 That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which
 is what
 I got.


 LOL. The beeps for mine are documented in the motherboadr manual, but
 the beeps are so hard to distinguish from one another, that it borders
 on useless. A voice would certainly be better.


 Yes, what is the difference between a "slow beep" and a "fast beep"?

 While I'm ranting, does anyone else have trouble remembering which of O
 and | is on, and which is off? What's the matter with "on" and "off"?


Hum, I never had problems with that: I always assumed the | meant a 
closed electrical circuit (ie, you closed the circuit with the switch), 
thus naturally it meant "on".

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Jan 28 2011
parent reply Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> writes:
Am 28.01.2011 13:33, schrieb Bruno Medeiros:

 On 08/01/2011 09:14, Walter Bright wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Saturday 08 January 2011 00:16:13 Walter Bright wrote:

 Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

 When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use

 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


 That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which
 is what
 I got.


 LOL. The beeps for mine are documented in the motherboadr manual, but
 the beeps are so hard to distinguish from one another, that it borders
 on useless. A voice would certainly be better.


 Yes, what is the difference between a "slow beep" and a "fast beep"?

 While I'm ranting, does anyone else have trouble remembering which of O
 and | is on, and which is off? What's the matter with "on" and "off"?


 
 Hum, I never had problems with that: I always assumed the | meant a closed
 electrical circuit (ie, you closed the circuit with the switch), thus naturally
 it meant "on".
 


O looks like a *closed* circle to me so this isn't that helpful IMHO ;)
Jan 28 2011
parent Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
On 28/01/2011 12:41, Daniel Gibson wrote:

 Am 28.01.2011 13:33, schrieb Bruno Medeiros:

 On 08/01/2011 09:14, Walter Bright wrote:

 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Saturday 08 January 2011 00:16:13 Walter Bright wrote:

 Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

 When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use

 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)


 That's a heckuva lot better than an undocumented beep pattern which
 is what
 I got.


 LOL. The beeps for mine are documented in the motherboadr manual, but
 the beeps are so hard to distinguish from one another, that it borders
 on useless. A voice would certainly be better.


 Yes, what is the difference between a "slow beep" and a "fast beep"?

 While I'm ranting, does anyone else have trouble remembering which of O
 and | is on, and which is off? What's the matter with "on" and "off"?


 Hum, I never had problems with that: I always assumed the | meant a closed
 electrical circuit (ie, you closed the circuit with the switch), thus naturally
 it meant "on".


 O looks like a *closed* circle to me so this isn't that helpful IMHO ;)


In my mental model (where the "|" means a closed circuit, or rather the 
part of the circuit that closes it and makes electricity pass through), 
the "O" doesn't fit well into that model, indeed, it makes no sense.
But just for the purposes of remembering which one is on or off, that 
doesn't matter at all: I just think of "is the | pressed or not?".

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Feb 01 2011
prev sibling parent reply Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes gmail.com> writes:
Am 08.01.2011 08:57, schrieb "Jérôme M. Berger":

 Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Friday, January 07, 2011 11:06:23 Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/7/11, Walter Bright<newshound2 digitalmars.com>  wrote:

 Some of them, like the hard drive LED, don't even

 indicate
 the polarity on the connector..


 I hate those things. There's bunch of LEDs on the PC case - USB
 indicators, power LEDs, etc, and they all have this super-tiny
 connector and they have to be put together in a really tight place on
 the motherboard. I leave the PC speaker disconnected though, who needs
 that thing anyway? :p


 It's useful for informing you that the computer is starting correctly and gives
 you an idea of what's wrong if it isn't (though you can live without that if
the
 computer seems to be okay). It's also useful for things like for when your CPU
 is getting too warm. However, I think that it's horrific that anything in the
OS
 or any program on the computer at all uses the PC speaker. It is _annoying_
when
 the command-line of all things starts beeping at you because you hit backspace
 too many times or something like that. At the moment, I haven't been
configuring
 my kernel recently (which is _not_ a fun thing to have to keep doing on every
 kernel update IMHO), but when I was, I specifically did _not_ compile in the PC
 speaker driver. I wish that that were the norm. Which reminds me, while the PC
 speaker is disabled in KDE, I really need to go and track down which change I
 need to make where to silence it when I've booted to the console rather than
all
 the way into KDE...


 	When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would use
 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)

 		Jerome


This is kinda cool. What kind of MB is that?
Jan 08 2011
parent reply =?UTF-8?B?IkrDqXLDtG1lIE0uIEJlcmdlciI=?= <jeberger free.fr> writes:
Daniel Gibson wrote:

 Am 08.01.2011 08:57, schrieb "J=C3=A9r=C3=B4me M. Berger":

     When I built my latest PC, I saw in the MB manual that it would us=




e

 speech synthesis on the PC speaker to report errors. So I tried to
 power on the PC without having plugged either CPU or RAM and it
 started to say "NO CPU FOUND! NO CPU FOUND!" in a loop with a
 hilarious Asian accent and the kind of rasping voice that used to
 characterized old DOS games. Pretty fun ;)

         Jerome


=20
 This is kinda cool. What kind of MB is that?


	It is an Asus A7N8X.

		Jerome
--=20
mailto:jeberger free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger jabber.fr
Jan 08 2011
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
""Jérôme M. Berger"" <jeberger free.fr> wrote in message 
news:igaasf$rdh$1 digitalmars.com...

It is an Asus A7N8X.


Unless I'm just out-of-date, Asus does tend to be pretty good.
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
I wonder if you can hack the thing to say whatever you want.
Jan 08 2011
parent Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw ubuntu.com> writes:
== Quote from Andrej Mitrovic (andrej.mitrovich gmail.com)'s article

 I wonder if you can hack the thing to say whatever you want.


If you'd could I'd program it to say “Good Afternoon Michael” every time I turn
it
on.
Jan 08 2011
prev sibling next sibling parent Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/7/11, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> wrote:

 However, I think that it's horrific that anything in
 the OS
 or any program on the computer at all uses the PC speaker.


That's why I plugged it out.

Although... the PC speaker was awesome in DOS games! Loved the sounds
and music coming out of it.
Jan 07 2011
prev sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:ig7n8o$1t3u$1 digitalmars.com...

 Max Samukha wrote:

 On 01/06/2011 09:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


 Good points. However, computer hardware analogies are a bit outdated. For 
 example, USB is prevalent nowadays. You connect a USB keyboard, mouse or 
 whatever to a slot, which is closest to you and forget about it.


 Yes, USB is a big improvement. So is SATA.


IDE's been keyed for a long time too. Wasn't originally, but has been for a 
long time now.
Jan 07 2011
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:44:10 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:ig7n8o$1t3u$1 digitalmars.com...

 Max Samukha wrote:

 On 01/06/2011 09:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


 Good points. However, computer hardware analogies are a bit outdated.  
 For
 example, USB is prevalent nowadays. You connect a USB keyboard, mouse  
 or
 whatever to a slot, which is closest to you and forget about it.


 Yes, USB is a big improvement. So is SATA.


 IDE's been keyed for a long time too. Wasn't originally, but has been  
 for a
 long time now.


SATA is better not because of the keyed nature of it.  How many times I  
have tried to twist around my IDE cables so they would be the right way to  
plug into two components!

That small cable makes a world of difference.  Same thing with HDMI --  
instead of 3-5 clunky cables that hopefully are color coded correctly, you  
get one cable transmitting all data.

-Steve
Jan 07 2011
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.voyerqyseav7ka steve-laptop...

 On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:44:10 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:ig7n8o$1t3u$1 digitalmars.com...

 Max Samukha wrote:

 On 01/06/2011 09:38 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2011/01/patterns_of_bug.html

 (dedicated to bearophile!)

 Anyone want to post it on reddit?


 Good points. However, computer hardware analogies are a bit outdated. 
 For
 example, USB is prevalent nowadays. You connect a USB keyboard, mouse 
 or
 whatever to a slot, which is closest to you and forget about it.


 Yes, USB is a big improvement. So is SATA.


 IDE's been keyed for a long time too. Wasn't originally, but has been 
 for a
 long time now.


 SATA is better not because of the keyed nature of it.  How many times I 
 have tried to twist around my IDE cables so they would be the right way to 
 plug into two components!

 That small cable makes a world of difference.  Same thing with HDMI --  
 instead of 3-5 clunky cables that hopefully are color coded correctly, you 
 get one cable transmitting all data.


I thought Walter was talking specifically about the keying. Also, I use 
these on my IDE drives which have been around for quite a few years: 
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0285984 
(They do something special with the shielding inside so that the wires don't 
have to be in a big ribbon). Granted, SATA cables are even better still, but 
these are still a huge improvement over the older-style IDE cables.
Jan 07 2011
prev sibling parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
The Reddit thread about this little article shows some interesting sub-threads:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/exfnb/patterns_of_bugs/

So I add some more comments to my first answer to the article:
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=126262


I too miss (a < b < c) in D, it's short, its meaning comes from mathematics and
it gives no confusion, it's more DRY than the D way and it evaluates the 'b'
variable only once. So it's a complete win across the whole line. But given the
original design decision of D, I agree that the D choice of disallowing it is
correct.



The design to prevent mistakes from entering the system is called Mistake
Proofing and was turned into a rigorous engineering practice by Shigeo Shingo.<


See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke



It is ironic that the company that created the technique that is a guiding
inspiration for Agile software, didn't use their own physical manufacturing
techniques when it came to writing their software.<


Right :-] Maybe they think they are just a hardware firm, or they don't
understand that software is way more complex than hardware, etc. I don't know
the causes.




The problem here is that writing code is a creative thinking process. Bolting
things to an airplane is not.<


This is an important insight that I think Walter article misses. 

This nice video talk about software engineering practice explains what that
means:
http://confreaks.net/videos/282-lsrc2010-real-software-engineering

Among other things, the talk explains an important difference between software
engineering and other engineering fields where an engineer draws a project and
then some people build it. In software engineering the program is the project,
the "people" that "build it" are the computer languages, and the final result
is the software running for the user. 

If in software engineering the program is the project, then writing a program
is the equivalent of creating the project. According to the talk programming is
like the design stage of an aeroplane, so comparing programming to bolting
things to an aeroplane is the wrong analogy for writing software. If this is
true, then a language has to be designed to help the design stage, that
probably is better done Agile.



Over in the D newsgroups, there are often impassioned debates about whether
particular patterns should be justifiably banned as being more trouble than
they are worth. More than a few suggest I set the bar unreasonably high - in
that D allows things that many suggest are fatally error prone (an example is
the default fall-through on switch case statements).<


This was written by Walter and I don't understand what he is trying to say.
But I'd like to improve the D switch, as we have discussed:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4349



In general, this strategy works, but there's this odd thing that happens in the
other direction also. Sometimes a bit less checking can lead to more diligence.
We see this with dynamic typing. People often consider it inherently unsafe,
but programmers adjust and often end up without worse runtime error rates. It's
sort of like this: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html


We can design away the possibility of some errors, but we can also design in
situations which demand diligence. People react in many subtle ways. That gives
us a very large design space.<

This is another exceptionally good comment. This may partially explain why my
Python programs are not more buggy than my D code (quite the opposite in truth)
despite I am using D for years, and D has consts, a static type system and I
write equally unit-tests in D and Python, and in D I also use Design By
Contracts, etc (it explains the situation just partially. Surely Python
multi-precision numbers on default avoid several troubles normally present in D
code).

Here we are probably talking about Risk homeostasis or Risk compensation in
programming and language design:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_homeostasis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation


The hypothesis of risk homeostasis holds that everyone has his or her own fixed
level of acceptable risk. When the level of risk in one part of the
individual's life changes, there will be a corresponding rise or fall in risk
elsewhere to bring the overall risk back to that individual's equilibrium.
Wilde argues that the same is true of larger human systems, e.g. a population
of drivers.<


The idea here is that D offers more built-in safeties, but programmers often
just program more sloppily, producing at the end about as many bugs. Surely
Python programs are more precise in their code formatting (because indentations
are part of the syntax), the result is that Python code is often formatted
better than D code and it's more uniform across different programmers. This
kills some useless discussions (where to put braces?) and allows people to put
inside their own Python projects code written by other Python programmers
avoiding to produce a program that looks like an Harlequin of different styles.

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 08 2011
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 The problem here is that writing code is a creative thinking process.
 Bolting things to an airplane is not.<


 
 This is an important insight that I think Walter article misses.



Not at all. Most of software engineering work consists of plugging in 
subassemblies. In this case, designing the grammar such that the
"subassemblies" 
of the grammar won't fit together in ways that don't make sense is perfectly 
analogous.
Jan 08 2011
parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Walter:


 Not at all. Most of software engineering work consists of plugging in 
 subassemblies. In this case, designing the grammar such that the
"subassemblies" 
 of the grammar won't fit together in ways that don't make sense is perfectly 
 analogous.


I see and I agree. That "real-software-engineering" video is probably a bit
extreme, the truth is probably more mixed, this means that software engineering
is not 100% design work, there's some bolting too :-)

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 08 2011