ebay - cardamatic

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Mon Feb 14 18:41:16 2005

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005, Antonio Carlini wrote:

>> 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 :-)

Wow. You have my deepest respect! (And sympathies :-)

>> Desk-checking is still good practice (maybe to a lesser degree of
>> detail though since we do have debuggers) and patching at the

> 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.

Oh I agree, really... I debug first with a few printf()s then the
debugger. But sometimes the problem is not code but wrong thinking,
and the debugger is a trees-not-forest tool.

> 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 :-)

Yes, we use them every day!
Received on Mon Feb 14 2005 - 18:41:16 GMT