in reply to Tales from the Crypt, 'use strict' Horror Stories

"YES, you do have time to work through 100s of error messages."

Having taught Computer Science labs in the past (C++), i noticed that many, many students try to write the entire program up front, then try to debug everything. I would force them to add/make one change at a time, save, compile, fix errors .. repeat. The idea is that if you only make one change, the error will be less ambigious, and you more than likely will know exactly where the problem is (but not always what).

Strict keeps me from doing stupid stuff like i demonstrated many moons ago at (jeffa) Re: using. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me design my ideas before i start coding or stop at good points along the way for sanity checks and it sure doesn't enforce me to use CVS.

In other words ... strict is just a small part of the solution, and i don't have any horror stories to tell because i always use it. :)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)
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Re: Tales from the Crypt, 'use strict' Horror Stories
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Nov 19, 2003 at 14:53 UTC
    Having taught Computer Science labs in the past (C++), i noticed that many, many students try to write the entire program up front, then try to debug everything.
    I used to do the labs that way during the first years when I was a student as well. But that's basically because you had to. Terminals were a commodity, and you had to make a reservation in advance. With a two hour limit a day. We were lucky if had terminal access more than three times a week. And programs were usually due 10 days after handing out the assignment. With several programming classes running in parallel. So, we usually ended up writing the complete programs by hand first, then typing it in when getting terminal access, hoping you could fix all the bugs in two hours!

    Abigail

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