[Ticket#: 2006040510000641] Re: [OT] Articles to read

[David Burgun]

On 7 Apr 2006, at 02:21, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> David Burgun wrote:
>> On 7 Apr 2006, at 02:00, J. Landman Gay wrote:
>>> David Burgun wrote:
>> , but if I use the left hand panel to select a handler/function,  
>> it  marks it as dirty. Go figure!!!!!
>> except I just tried it again, now, same stack, same script and now  
>> it  doesn't mark it as dirty. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
>
> Right. So now...if you were trying to fix this bug, how would you  
> proceed? ;)

It depends on whether I wrote it in the first place or not. Assume I  
didn't and have been given the source code, I'd take a look at it and  
see how well it was written. If we were written really badly then I'd  
re-write it using a software engineering techniques to make sure a  
minimum of bugs were actually added to the code in the first place  
and I'd build in instrumentation to allow the software to be verified.

If it were reasonably written, then in this case I'd add some code to  
dump out the "dirty" flag (assuming that's how it's done) at keys  
processing points and track it that way.

What I wouldn't do is release the code if there were a bug I could  
reproduce at will (like colorization).

I am guessing that the IDE is a real hod-podge of code that's been  
hacked about by a lot of different people and has gotton way too hard  
to do anything on now. I have seen this before at other places. C/C++  
(or low level language) programmers put together a cool high level  
system/language that allows "users" to write their own "programs".  
Then they need to actually use their language to implement something.  
They approach the problem with the attitude, I'm C/C++ programmer so  
coding in this high level language will be really easy and they just  
start slapping down the code. Soon they build a monster and find it's  
hard to control it! Exactly that happened years ago when I worked at  
IncoTerm, they had a Data Entry System and wrote a simple language  
for data verification, the low level programmers took on the job of  
building systems using their creation. It was a real mess and was  
eventually re-written by an applications programmer.

All the Best
Dave