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Something Every Developer Knows

Jun 12, 2012#1

Covar

If you didn't before, now you do.

Jun 13, 2012#2

Terrik

This information has been filed, and will be promptly deleted.

Jun 13, 2012#3

Ravenpoe

They know how to piss off people using dark themes?

Jun 13, 2012#4

Covar

Pictures are far superior to actually trying to make a table with bbCode.

Jun 13, 2012#5

Ravenpoe

Covar said:
Pictures are far superior to actually trying to make a table with bbCode.

It's the transparency that's the problem.

Jun 13, 2012#6

Eriol

How about this?

Code:

for(int i = 1; i <= arraysize; i++)
    array[i] = array[i] + i;

If you don't know why that is very very wrong, you are in BIG trouble.

Edit: For extra points: What is truth?

This is worse than above btw.

Code:

enum Bool
{
    True,
    False,
    FileNotFound
};

Jun 18, 2012#7

Necronic

Eriol said:
Code:

for(int i = 1; i <= arraysize; i++) array[i] = array[i] + i;

Ok, other than the index starting at one (which will break the loop at the final step since i<=arraysize is the exit condition, which will take you out of bounds on the loop), and the "array=array + 1" line being deeply strange (but it should work assuming the values are numeric,integers preferably depending on how the language works), I don't see any issues.

I'm missing something really obvious, or was it one of those issues?

edit: heh, apparently I can't put an I in brackets or it itallicizes my writing.

Jun 21, 2012#8

Eriol

Necronic,

Yes, 1-off problems are basically the bane of developers in any language. I think that if you spent nothing but a month on them for beginners, it still wouldn't be enough time. I still see it. Hence why the focus on enumeration lately across virtually all languages, since the collection itself tells you when it's done. But whenever you do math based upon the indexes (transforms often have this) or are traversing more than one collection at a time you're back to index-based (usually) and people still make these errors way too often.

I'm actually hyper-sensitive about this ever since an old project in University where I had this problem. I was overwriting "somewhere" in memory, and the program crashed in the destructor of an STL class. I was 99% certain that the destructor didn't have a bug, and had no f'n idea where my actual bug was. I was fortunate that in that case I was able to re-compile with a different compiler, and it threw a more useful error. But ever since it's the first thing I look for with "why isn't this working?" when looking at things.

Jun 21, 2012#9

Bowielee

My teacher basically drilled zero as a starting index into our head, so I always view the first index in a series as index zero now.

Jun 21, 2012#10

Necronic

Which is great advice as long as you ignore the languages where the index starts at 1 (won't matter for most programmers, but if you ever deal with sceintific programming it will hose you.)

Jun 22, 2012#11

Fun Size

Honestly, if my years of programming have taught me anything, it's that there's nothing that every developer knows.

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