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in reply to T.I.T.S. Or, Try It To See.

While there are obvious benefits to the TITS approach, it can lead to BUMS - Breaks on User's Machine Syndrome - if the coder doesn't understand why it works. It's also known as programming in hope, or sunny-day programming.

 

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Re^2: T.I.T.S. leads to B.U.M.S.
by Ben Win Lue (Friar) on Apr 28, 2006 at 09:35 UTC
    Actually, I think the chances of B.U.M.S are much higher, if you did not have at least one T.I.T.S phase in your career.

    Ok, the T.I.T.S approach should not be used in wrting software for the control of atomic power plants. But if you have a secluded sandbox, just get in touch with T.I.T.S!

Re^2: T.I.T.S. leads to B.U.M.S.
by Tanalis (Curate) on Apr 28, 2006 at 09:34 UTC
    I disagree (and think you've maybe misunderstood the OP ..).

    I think there's more to be said for trying to figure out how something works yourself than for just looking for an answer. I'm championing understanding and learning over an "easy way out" - that of knowing how to type the right keywords into a search engine to get to an implementation.

    Maybe there is an aspect of programming in hope. I think it's more important to be able to read a man page, or look at a synopsis and examples in a book, and have the confidence to try it out to see what it does than it is to look for a fully-working implementation that you also don't understand. If it works, great, you've found a tool to add to your repetoire. If it didn't work (which is often much more likely for a novice), then you're forced to revisit the code, re-read the examples, and try to figure out why it didn't work. When you do finally get it working, chances are you have a better understanding of why it's working than you would have done if you'd blindly typed out a working line of code from the net.

    There has to be a starting point to any form of learning. Simply asking for the answers isn't (shouldn't be) one of them, in my opinion - and that's my point in the OP.