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Reading and Programming
Jun. 25th, 2006 05:52 pmI just read Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It's a very engrossing and quick read; I rarely finish a book in a day.
I wouldn't have spent the whole day at home, but I have another cold. Drat.
Today, I cleaned some of the dust from my programming skill (the FreeCell simulation didn't count; I'm talking about stuff that needs debugging), and created a sorely needed update to a program I had written long ago, which will only be of interest to people who are very much into the game "Might and Magic VII". I haven't spent an afternoon programming in quite a while, and would even call it pleasant, if it weren't for the debugging.
I mean, really. You know that moment when you save your program, breathe a sigh of satisfaction, and are about to compile it for the first time? The rational part of you knows that there will be errors. But there's this tiny voice saying, "I'm not aware of any bugs, so maybe it'll just work!" And even though you would sooner expect pigs to fly, it still sets you up for disappointment when you see that screen full of errors. But those are just the easy ones. Once it compiles, then you get to wonder why the search is stopping after only eleven characters (because it thinks ASCII 255 is an EOF), why your output file is missing about a third of its length (because I had "!=" instead of "=="), and how you managed to overlook all those silly mistakes (by way of being sick and tired).
I just remembered the other pitfall of programming: Suddenly realizing that you haven't eaten anything all day but the white chocolate M&M's within reach of the keyboard. I'd better make some real food.
I wouldn't have spent the whole day at home, but I have another cold. Drat.
Today, I cleaned some of the dust from my programming skill (the FreeCell simulation didn't count; I'm talking about stuff that needs debugging), and created a sorely needed update to a program I had written long ago, which will only be of interest to people who are very much into the game "Might and Magic VII". I haven't spent an afternoon programming in quite a while, and would even call it pleasant, if it weren't for the debugging.
I mean, really. You know that moment when you save your program, breathe a sigh of satisfaction, and are about to compile it for the first time? The rational part of you knows that there will be errors. But there's this tiny voice saying, "I'm not aware of any bugs, so maybe it'll just work!" And even though you would sooner expect pigs to fly, it still sets you up for disappointment when you see that screen full of errors. But those are just the easy ones. Once it compiles, then you get to wonder why the search is stopping after only eleven characters (because it thinks ASCII 255 is an EOF), why your output file is missing about a third of its length (because I had "!=" instead of "=="), and how you managed to overlook all those silly mistakes (by way of being sick and tired).
I just remembered the other pitfall of programming: Suddenly realizing that you haven't eaten anything all day but the white chocolate M&M's within reach of the keyboard. I'd better make some real food.
