Learning how to write software and trying to stand on a surfboard
Found this by Matthew Ogilvy whilst browsing the comments on an article in the SMH about the Mile High Club:
“The closest I’ve gotten to mile high status is being screwed repeatedly by Qantas. Sky high fares, terrible food and lousy service.”
One of the first things you learn, one of the most fundamentally easy things to implement, one of the best things you can do to help write easy-to-maintain code, is to provide your variables with meaningful names. It’s not hard. So why am I having to maintain this?
Tdmbrokdi_d.ClassDeleteInv(SavedSechID);
DMTrans_d.DMC.DeleteNode(SavedSechID);
StuffChanged(DTBC_INV or DTBC_TRANS);
DMTrans_d.wwQSECHOLD.First;
Is it really too much to ask to name these entities in a slightly more meaningful way? This example is just one snippet from approximately 500,000 lines of similar, horrible code… Oh god – what have I gotten myself into?
Just read an article in the ITNews Australia about Gates and Otellini responding to skeptics claiming the PC is dead:
“…with skeptics saying the growing popularity of devices, such as Apple’s iPod music player, digital cameras and video recorders could make the traditional home computer obsolete.”
But surely these “PC skeptics” are missing something: How do you get new music onto your IPod if you don’t have a PC? Surely a major part of the IPod’s success has been ITunes – a piece of software which has redefined an entire industry. But it needs a PC to run…. Another example: How do your configure your wireless access point without a PC? You’re not gonna use your PSP to do that. You generally need something that can plug directly into your AP over a LAN. Like a PC. Download the latest episode of Lost using BitTorrent? Your won’t be doing that with your mobile phone within 5 years*.
The PC cannot be marked for extinction. If these skeptics really do exist, then they haven’t really applied any brain power to this subject. Maybe it’s all just hype made up by IT journalists because they’ve got nothing else to write about?
* Would love to be proved wrong on this one, but I just don’t see it happening.