This isn't new

Posted Jul 18, 2012 19:17 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: This isn't new by nim-nim
Parent article: Left by Rawhide

Ah, software developer optimism. You gotta love it.

(Of course *I* would never suffer from such a delusion. My code simply has no bugs. I know because I fixed all the bugs I found, and now I can find no more bugs so I know there must be no more bugs. Also, the Earth has a green sky and six retrograde moons.)

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This isn't new

Posted Jul 20, 2012 3:27 UTC (Fri) by doogie (guest, #2445) [Link] (3 responses)

The only code that is bug free is that which is not yet written.

This isn't new

Posted Jul 20, 2012 8:47 UTC (Fri) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link] (2 responses)

Code not yet written doesn't run, which is a bug. ;-)

This isn't new

Posted Jul 20, 2012 9:24 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

Code not written has no users and thus by definition it is perfect.

That's the uncertainty principle applied to software: bugs not observed do not exist (yet)

This isn't new

Posted Jul 20, 2012 12:41 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Not so. I currently suspect there is at least one bug in part of my code that has never run, but I am attacking it later, when other bugs are fixed so code flow can reach that bug and prove its existence. This bug is in an indeterminate state. :)

Schneier's law of software?

Posted Jul 22, 2012 4:40 UTC (Sun) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] (1 responses)

Sounds as if we have a programming equivalent of Schneier's Law:

Any programmer can write a program so good he can't find any bugs in it.

Schneier's law of software?

Posted Jul 23, 2012 17:45 UTC (Mon) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]

It pretty much already exists, and long predates Schneier's:

"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"
-- Brian Kernighan, "The Elements of Programming Style"