My first web app in 1995 was also built like this!
Except I had no idea malloc existed and the whole thing was static arrays...
139 karma · joined September 3, 2010
Except I had no idea malloc existed and the whole thing was static arrays...
It is good to see some partial solutions to this issue. It plagues most languages and introduces a nice little ambiguity that is just trouble waiting to happen.
Ironically, JavaScript with its hilarious `null` and `undefined` does not have this problem.
Most JSON parsers and emitters in most languages should use a special value for "JSON null".
My favourite debugging technique is "introduce a known error".
This validates that your set of "facts" about the file you think you're editing are actually facts about the actual file you are editing.
For example: is the damn thing even compiling?
Look no further than “The Specialist” by Charles Sale
“YOU'VE heard a lot of pratin' and prattlin' about this bein' the age of specialization. I'm a carpenter by trade. At one time I could of built a house, barn, church, or chicken coop. But I seen the need of a specialist in my line, so I studied her. I got her, she's mine. Gentlemen, you are face to face with the champion privybuilder of Sangamon County.”
Sometimes the best books are also the shortest.
https://www.toiletrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Spec...
Increased developer productivity will lead to a lot more software development, at all levels, rather than less.
1. "In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced."
(Hey Jarred - Let’s get that zig package thing done soon!)
In my last shop, we had 8 (I think) former CEOs on staff. All made very significant impacts to the business.
If you are staring into the Valley of Death, remember that it is a valley, and you do come out the other side, and that makes you rare and valuable.
A key factor would be that we as a company support and maintain an open source framework. I'm not sure how well it would work without that.
Thus: move to the city, as the gifted child will most likely do just fine in life. Have dinner with the depressed friend, because the happy friend will enjoy the concert anyway.
Seems perfectly consistent with even simplistic utilitarianism.
It is fun when the young 'uns do a double take after you execute a particularly fancy macro. I do love that.
Overrides and inheritance are a world of pain. Unification and commutative operations restore sanity to the actual work of coding with a domain representation language because WYSIWYG. And you get type safety for your domain model.
The project is still at the “Read the Source, Luke” stage so caveat emptor until we get a respectable release out.
(Probably not, but I'm loving the `strange(truth) > strange(fiction)`)
With respect to the debugging of the Euler characteristic, one might ask what truth value formulations during those decades of debugging had, from the perspective of those on the ground at the time. Are we so sure in our present age that there no bugs in Andrew Wiles’s work?
Even if you use automated machine proofs (Mathematica and friends) you still can’t be sure that stray cosmic rays don’t flip a bit every damn time.
Fun times.
You may think the abstract structures that you learn about are fixed fundamental truths, but just read Lakatos’s account of the multi-decade debugging of the Euler characteristic for polyhedra and you will realise that maths is both created and discovered.
How do ya like them apples for yer epistemology!
Another example would be limits vs infinitesimals - which is the “true” foundation of calculus? [1]
Or have you ever struggled with the Axiom of Choice?
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations
[1]: And the correct answer, as all you Coventry City fans will know, is: trick question