> Also, no one debugs from memory dumps anymore -- UGH! What
> masochism that is! Only did it once.
I still do that when needed. I did it a lot while at DEC - when
all you have from a customer is a crash dump and a description
of the symptoms, you have little choice :-)
> Desk-checking is still good practice (maybe to a lesser degree of
> detail though since we do have debuggers) and patching at the
> source level is of course common (for non-fascist OSs that let you
> have source (if you want it (I often dont))).
Given that the costs have changed, desk-checking is going to be
far less useful than it used to be. It still has its place, but
it is often far more effective to combine that with strategically
placed assertions.
> One aspect of "desk checking" is an obscure, little-known tool in
> design known as "planning ahead". From the looks of most crap-ass
> software it appears that people think of programs as collections
> of feetches (rhymes with...).
Planning is still useful. I've no idea whether it is any more
or less common now than it used to be. Large project failures
still seem to happen with monotonous regularity :-)
Antonio
--
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Antonio Carlini arcarlini_at_iee.org
Received on Mon Feb 14 2005 - 18:26:49 GMT