Thread: How Qt is it?
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Old 03-16-2011, 11:36 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Solomoriah
I was taught in college to engage in Defensive Programming: Identify the things that might go wrong, and write code to deal with them. There are problems with that. The main one is that you have to have a freakin' crystal ball to predict all the things that might go wrong.


Over many years of developing software products to be delivered to the end user market, I have been conditioned toward defensive programming. Many people think I am a pessimist because I am always looking for things which can go wrong in any situation and I have to explain that anything I miss today is tomorrow's bug.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Solomoriah
Now I engage in Offensive Programming. I write the simplest thing that might work, and test it. When it throws tracebacks at me, I write code to fix the bugs. I may miss things, but whatever I miss is usually pretty unlikely so it will rarely if ever bother the user.

Since I deliver source code everywhere, I can fix bugs on the spot when they are found; if needed, I then copy affected modules to my office computer or to a flash drive for later distribution to other customers.



My brother and I get into debates about this. He works on web software. Stuff which can be baby sat and problems addressed when they happen. Totally different from software delivered to operate standalone on end user hardware or embedded within a device. At least today, fixes can be rolled out via downloaded patches. We did not have that luxury a few years ago.


Bill
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