Traits, r

[Andy Armstrong]

On 8 Feb 2008, at 16:44, Paul Johnson wrote:
> I've never fully understood this argument.  Or more accurately,  
> perhaps,
> I've never really believed it.  Or even more accurately, I suppose,  
> it's
> the end of the week and there's only a few minutes left before I go  
> to get
> my train and I can't be bothered to start anything new so I'm going to
> write mail to londom.pm.

Yeah, it's a great sounding canard :)

> But in any case, debugging seems to me to be an integral part of
> programming.  If you crank out loads of code which doesn't work  
> properly
> you're not programming.  If you can't understand what you just wrote,
> then why did you write it?
>
> Now I'm not suggesting that debugging isn't more difficult than  
> writing
> code since it clearly is.  I'm just suggesting that the code without  
> the
> debugging isn't much use.

Programming to 100% of your ability should mean programming /well/  
(i.e. in a way that's easy to debug) rather than programming in the  
most tricksy way you can. Maybe a couple of times in the last twelve  
months I've written something and then thought "shit, I can't even  
understand that and I just wrote it". In each case I rewrote it - even  
though it worked. And then later I thanked my earlier self.

I suspect the rule was coined at a time when programming at 100% was  
more likely to imply writing gnarly code that was right on the edge  
(or slighly over) the limit of your ability to understand it rather  
than optimising for debuggability.

> Now sometimes I find myself in the happy situation where having  
> written a
> bunch of code and associated tests it all just works the first time  
> I run
> it.  But I still have to go back and look at it to make sure it is
> actually working rather than just appearing to be working.

Yes, that's always disconcerting...

> But even in these situations I think I have done pre-emptive  
> debugging.
> That is, experience has taught me to approach the problem in a certain
> way.  Or when I have been writing the code I have remembered to pay
> special attention to certain points because I have learnt that that is
> where bugs could easily creep in.
>
> Actually, I suppose I'm not really disagreeing with anything here.
> Perhaps I'm just being disagreeable.  And I'm not sure I really have a
> good point to make either.

I think you do :)

> Perhaps it is just that writing code beyond the extent of your  
> ability to
> debug it isn't really programming.  If the code works at all it is
> presumably by luck, or because you copied it from somewhere.  That's  
> not
> programming.

+1

-- 
Andy Armstrong, Hexten