|
Top-level
@b0rk So glad that #3 is immediately followed by #4. My "good advice and maxims for programmers" from 199? has "Looking for a compiler bug is the strategy of LAST resort. LAST resort." (Most of it is not actually good advice, but I think that bit holds up.) 6 comments
@flooey @b0rk https://blog.plover.com/prog/compiler-error.html "I feel as though I have accidentally spotted the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot, or something like that, a strange and legendary monster that until now I thought most likely didn't exist." @b0rk Here's Jeff Atwood's version of this, also inferior to your way of expressing it: "The First Rule of Programming: It's Always Your Fault". https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-first-rule-of-programming-its-always-your-fault/  @mjd yeah in general I find that debugging advice is often very… condescending? and it makes me mad @swiftone @b0rk I call that "the Finger of Blame". My kid was taking a programming class last year and I explained: "The goal here is to point the Finger of Blame: What part of the code is really responsible for the problem? First you accuse the code that actually prints the wrong result. Then that code says “Nuh uh, it was like that when I got it, go blame that other guy that gave it to me.” Eventually you find the smoking gun." Julia would probably have a less recriminatory way of putting it. |
Gregory's Server
@mjd @b0rk I once tracked a problem down to an actual factual compiler bug and I felt like I had won the lottery.