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I guess I am one of the complainers | 67 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
I guess I am one of the complainers
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 12 2013 @ 01:47 PM EST
Actually everyone is wrong.

Bad coders will write bad code if they copy it from somewhere else or write it
from scratch. Any coder that won't fix an obvious error, is a bad coder.

Anyone who insists on understanding everything in a complex system before
touching it, will never be able to touch a complex system.

I can't count the times I've had to jump into parts of the Linux kernel and
change something without understanding what was going on everywhere else. Most
of the time I managed to fix things, but sometimes I made them worse.

Give me any language, programing environment, methodology or whatnot, and I can
still produce bad code. The only thing that stops me from producing bad code is
me.

It's not the method of coding, it's the coder that produces good or bad code.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I guess I am one of the complainers
Authored by: dio gratia on Tuesday, February 12 2013 @ 04:06 PM EST

What you are describing is a programming language with a lack of object protection. The original libcrypt code used two 32 entry arrays of 'bits' (static char L[32], R[32];) declared successively for L and R blocks of the DES algorithm implementation. It operated on the combined LR block without having declared it counting on declaration order. You could note the lack of protection on doing pointer arithmetic resulting in an offset greater than the size of an object.

Imagine the declaration order isn't defined by the language specification but tends to become conventional while you point to an outlier. The actual issue here is as you point out code portability. Look how long it took before a standard nomenclature for variable size declarations took to come about in C. You could modify the programming language to prevent dependence on declaration order, such as placing buffer unused space between declared objects suggesting the use of unions to insure the ability to count on declaration order continuity.

The solution might be to lobby for refining the language specification to insure portability or to switch to an object oriented language, wherein when combined with a virtual machine portability might be assured. Without object class and a virtual machine overlay you can still get a class of human errors such as mistaking feet and meters resulting in too high a terminal velocity for a Mars lander.

The resulting code can be just as compact when indirection isn't used requiring run time bounds checking. Otherwise an incompletely specified programming language requires programming practices and code reviews to find portability issues, which as your manager and colleague demonstrate was low priority in the instance you recounted.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I guess I am one of the complainers
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 12 2013 @ 05:32 PM EST
>Experimental coding does not work. You need to UNDERSTAND what you are
doing.

Spoken like a professional.

But ... these kids aren't professionals. They're just LEARNING. The beauty of
this kind of learning is that they can manipulate something and watch the result
happen... and, in the process, perhaps obtain understanding.

It's the same process an infant uses to explore the real world--pick up
everything, shake it, smell it, attempt to eat it, throw it and see what
happens. It's all good.

Now, some of these kids may never understand nutrition or mechanics or neurology
or object encapsulation. But if they don't play first, NONE of them will
understand.

Let them play. Cheer. Some of them will be the ones who understand some day.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I'm glad I didn't have to work for your manager.
Authored by: albert on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 02:16 PM EST
There would be yelling and fist waving. Mind boggling example. They couldn't
see 100 elements vs. 101 indexes? I never met a coder who couldn't see this.

Deming said: "You can't inspect quality into a part." In software it
is: "You can't test quality into software." And even software that
works 'perfectly' can still have security holes. Software complexity has
outstripped our capabilities for understanding it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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