in reply to Re: Programming Laws
in thread Programming Laws

Metadoktor's Law of Spelling

If it can be misspelled, then it will be misspelled.

For instance, that's Corollary and not Corrollary.

Spelling applies to programming and not just English or whatever other language you know.

also

Metadoktor's Law of Documentation

There is no such thing as well documented code.

and a corollary...

No one will read the documentation even if it exists!

metadoktor

"The doktor is in."

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: Programming Laws
by scain (Curate) on Jan 25, 2002 at 00:28 UTC
    My group now has to spell "deprecated" as "depricated" because when I did the database design, I spelled it wrong, wrote a bunch of code around it, and now it has too much inertia to fix

    Scott

[reply]
      A relatively harmless infraction compared to the guy who misspelt "referrer" as "referer" (as in $ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'})

      § George Sherston
[reply]
[d/l]
      .oO( find | xargs perl -i -pe's/depricated/deprecated/g' )
      (update: stefp correctly said /g was a good idea) 

      2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas'
Segmentation fault
2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$

      [download]

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        There is a loophole (sic). you probably meant:

        <ctt>find | xargs perl -i -pe's/depricated/deprecated/g'

        -- stefp -- check out TeXmacs wiki

[reply]
        Yes, yes, I know I could do that, but I don't really want to break something that is currently working. That misspelling is spread across MSSQL Server as column headings in various tables, VB script ASPs, C++ applications, and Perl scripts. If I were to try to change it now, it would certainly break something.
[reply]

      The project I inherited and now spend most of my time with is full of these. And they could not even misspell consistently :-(

      Jenda
      Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
         -- Rick Osborne

      Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature

[reply]
Gratuitous spelling flame
by boo_radley (Parson) on Jan 25, 2002 at 00:06 UTC
    If it can be misspelled, then it will be misspelled.
    Big words coming from someone named "metadoktor".
[reply]
      you probably meant:
      "If it can be mispelled, then it will be misspelled."
      Corollary: misspelings are not consistant.

      -- stefp -- check out TeXmacs wiki

[reply]
      Calm down boo_radley. It was not meant as a flame. It's just a fact of life that words will get misspelled.

      metadoktor

      "The doktor is in."

[reply]
        I think he meant it humourously! He was calling his own post a gratuitous flame, interestingly enough from a linguistic point of view, precisely so as to tell us that it was *not* a flame.

        § George Sherston
[reply]
      Metadoktor is a perfectly well spelled word in almost
      every language except English. What is it with English
      and this completely superfluous C?

      Regards, Helgi Briem

[reply]

In Section Meditations