Subj : Re: Not debugging? (was: How much should I charge for fixed-price ...) To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : Roedy Green Date : Wed Aug 24 2005 09:47 am On 24 Aug 2005 17:31:43 +1000, Tim X wrote or quoted : >I cold be just from an 'old school' that pretty much predated >integrated IDEs with all the snazzy features that are common these >days. Up until the mid 70s, you could only count on one compile/run a day per project. You REALLY had to make it count. The alternative was to book time at 3 AM to have exclusive use of the mainframe. I think though, code that has been watched running catches more bugs than just examining output. You need to account for any unexpected run behaviour, not just unexpected final results. The problem is, today's programs are so big, there is no way you could exhaustively watch them over every code path. Because finding and fixing bugs is so easy, we tend to be more careless about writing code in the first place. Dr. Kennedy, the head of our computer science department bragged that he had never had a compile error. He was a fanatical desk checker. -- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com .