Spyke

Replies

Comment on

Easy choice

Tells you exactly what and at which line the problem is?

Syntax error: unmatched thing in thing from std::nonstd::__map<_Cyrillic, _$$$dollars>const basic_string<epic_mystery,mongoose_traits<char>, __default_alloc_<casual_Fridays = maybe>>

Comment on

C++

Reply in thread

Sure, strtok is a terrible misfeature, a relic of ancient times, but it's plainly the heritage of C, not C++ (just like e.g. strcpy). The C++ problems are things like braced initialization list having different meaning depending on the set of available constructors, or the significantly non-zero cost of various abstractions, caused by strange backward-compatible limitations of the standard/ABI definitions, or the distinctness of vector<bool> etc.

Comment on

gut pull

Reply in thread

Beware the DWIM!

In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there typed delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported *$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'. It then started to delete all the files on the disk!

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html

Comment on

The design is very human

Reply in thread

Add automatic normalization to the box (you know, you type "05" and it drops the leading zero, you type "0.70" and it drops the trailing zero, etc.) and it often gets completely impossible to write anything valid. Some banking apps do something similar. :-)

Comment on

average c++ dev

Reply in thread

I understand the idea. But many people have hugely mistaken beliefs about what the C[++] languages are and how they work. When you write ADC EAX, R13 in assembly, that's it. But C is not a "portable assembler"! It has its own complicated logic. You might think that by writing ++i, you are writing just some INC [i] ot whatnot. You are not. To make a silly example, writing int i=INT_MAX; ++i; you are not telling the compiler to produce INT_MIN. You are just telling it complete nonsense. And it would be better if the compiler "prevented" you from doing it, forcing you to explain yourself better.

Comment on

Production breaking driven developer

Reply in thread

This might work when the test really describes&tests the business rule, not when the test simply contains a mirror of the implementation with everything replaced by mocks and just checks that the implementation is what it is, conditioning all people changing the code in the future to always have to change the test as well.