Subj : Re: Not debugging? (was: How much should I charge for fixed-price ...) To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : Tim X Date : Wed Aug 24 2005 06:31 pm rem642b@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes: > > From: "Phlip" > > The hirers are sick and tired of only getting kiddies who know .NET > > but don't know how to think to avoid debugging. > > I suppose it depends on what you consider "debugging". I write a line > of code and immediately apply it to the data I have to see if it gives > the data I want. If not, I change that line of code. If it works, I > move on to writing the next line of code. When I get to the end of the > function I'm working on, I put all those lines together and unit-test > the entire function on the data I was just using and any other cases > that are useful to make sure it really works correctly in all cases. > You consider that not to be debugging, correct? What do you call it then? I'm guessing he was referring to the irritating development of programmers who are not able to debug code without a high level IDE which includes a debugger which allows them to step/trace through the code one line at a time and watch what happens to variables in a watch window. IMO this is a really bad trend because it means programmers stop thinking about their code and how it actually works. this sort of 'debugging' tends to be extremely slow - especially for trivial type bugs which would noramlly be spotted very quickly by someone wh understands what their code is doing and how it works. I cold be just from an 'old school' that pretty much predated integrated IDEs with all the snazzy features that are common these days. Debuggers were around, but often getting them and your code configured to use them, loadinig them up and setting breakpoints etc, was more effort than it was worth except for really difficult problems which could not be solved by looking at the code and thinking about what was going on at the logical level. Tim -- Tim Cross The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out! .