CompuServe Messages

>Wayne, I have a problem with you! I even like your arguments! The trouble >is, I think, that you speak more like an idealist. I think he's just laying the cards down in a practical way. There is no optimal solution in general. This is not idealism but pragmatics. > I have programmed more or less >continously for seventeen years now. I have made horrible errors and I still >do. HOWEVER! nearly all my errors are due to typing mistakes (I don't speak for >my first year or so). Even if you are a genius, I find this impossible. You have never misunderstood a specification, and hence designed or coded the wrong thing? You have never maintained a program, and made the wrong correction/addition? You have never implemented an algorithm incorrectly? You have never forgotten a special test case (this can happen even with instrumentation)? You've never simply misunderstood and pickeled yourself? However ridiculous, hasn't your boss ever forced you into slap-happy all-nighters? You've never done a quick fix that never got properly tested and "slow fixed"? I coded, written and spoken about a diversity of applications in a slew of languages on a host of machines, I guess for 18 years now, and am considered a master programmer, nonetheless, I've never been able to say that most of my errors are typos, though I'd like to! 😉 and with they were! 😉 Even in the best of circumstances <bleep> happens, and here were are, or at least, here I am. I wonder if perhaps our universes (application domain, and their scale that is) are grossly different, but even at that, am left curious.