Debugging Tricks : Going Blank
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From: MM on 10 Mar 2010 02:37 On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 19:26:56 -0500, "Nobody" <nobody(a)nobody.com> wrote: >Off topic: These might be of interest: > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_development_philosophies > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing > >I found that code-as-you-go is not a good idea unless one does unit testing. >Before incorporating a routine into a program, one needs to test it alone >with sample data. In some cases with arrays or buffer manipulation or >sorting for instance, the routine may not be doing what's it supposed to do >in certain cases. It's common to not process the first or last element, or >if there are only one or two elements in the array or buffer. This saved me >a lot of time in introducing bugs into a larger program which would be hard >to track later. Even though I have been using VB for 15+ years, I could make >mistakes like that. In some cases I found that testing with 3 elements for >example works fine, and many developers would be happy with that, including >me, but I found issues mostly with the first or last element, so thorough >testing of routines is essential if one wants to save debugging time later. >In some cases you mentally approve of certain routines, so you don't >question them, so if you are looking for a source of a bug, you don't find >it, or it takes you longer to find it because your limited testing of the >routine wasn't enough to detect all the bugs in the routine. > >Using flowcharts and careful designing is obviously better, but takes time, >but it's worth it. Problems can be found at the design stage so there is no >need to do find bug-fix-test-repeat. If there are N bugs, then you have to >do this fix and test cycle N times, and the software takes longer to finish. >With careful designing, this can be eliminated or reduced significantly. But VB was always known as "Rapid Application Development" and "careful" design can mean "Rigid Application Development". While that might be appropriate for a standard financial or statistics program where the emphasis is on the accuracy of the number crunching and the UI takes a bit of a back seat, I don't think it's necessary for other types of software. One gets further ideas as one develops the UI - a kind of "suck it and see". I'll change the UI constantly during the early stages, and later, too. Take, f'rinstance, my decision to implement the special typomatic comboboxes and save a lot of validation code on textboxes. Yes, I test each routine separately, but I think one can make debugging slightly easier by adopting very standardised practices. For instance, it is VERY rare that I will start an array from 1. I nearly always start any array from 0. This particular practice has stood me in good stead for years. Maybe this is because some of my very first forays into programming were done in assembler on a (don't laugh) TRS-80 and I just had to get used to counting from zero. I find it perfectly natural to do For x = 0 To ..... rather than For x = 1 To ..... but I can understand that many people new to programming find it hard to begin with to treat zero as a valid element. MM
From: MM on 10 Mar 2010 02:55 On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 20:16:36 -0500, "Nobody" <nobody(a)nobody.com> wrote: > >"ralph" <nt_consulting64(a)yahoo.net> wrote in message >news:96ndp5546ejmhcoccqbtkifl1tq9sng1pv(a)4ax.com... >> It used to be available as a free-download. >> [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ee410535.aspx] ??? > >It's still freely downloadable from the link you provided. I've just downloaded ALL the items on that page. In these days of massive hard drives, plus DVD blanks for a few cents/pennies each, I've got nothing to lose by grabbing them while they're still available. MM
From: MM on 10 Mar 2010 04:35 On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 20:16:36 -0500, "Nobody" <nobody(a)nobody.com> wrote: > >"ralph" <nt_consulting64(a)yahoo.net> wrote in message >news:96ndp5546ejmhcoccqbtkifl1tq9sng1pv(a)4ax.com... >> It used to be available as a free-download. >> [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ee410535.aspx] ??? > >It's still freely downloadable from the link you provided. *** Linked file WILL NOT unzip/install! *** Note that "Visual Basics Docs folder from VB 5.0 CD (VB5)" won't unzip/install. I tried it and after unzipping the first few files it prompts to insert a second disk, which I don't have. Not a problem for me as I don't use VB5 any more and I have all the docs anyway. MM
From: MM on 10 Mar 2010 04:59 On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:35:16 +0000, MM <kylix_is(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: >On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 20:16:36 -0500, "Nobody" <nobody(a)nobody.com> wrote: > >> >>"ralph" <nt_consulting64(a)yahoo.net> wrote in message >>news:96ndp5546ejmhcoccqbtkifl1tq9sng1pv(a)4ax.com... >>> It used to be available as a free-download. >>> [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ee410535.aspx] ??? >> >>It's still freely downloadable from the link you provided. > >*** Linked file WILL NOT unzip/install! *** > >Note that "Visual Basics Docs folder from VB 5.0 CD (VB5)" won't >unzip/install. I tried it and after unzipping the first few files it >prompts to insert a second disk, which I don't have. Not a problem for >me as I don't use VB5 any more and I have all the docs anyway. Also, I get a Close/Ignore error in Smsisstub when I try to run VB5Docs.exe (not immediately). MM
From: Karl E. Peterson on 10 Mar 2010 14:53
MM wrote: > On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 20:16:36 -0500, "Nobody" <nobody(a)nobody.com> wrote: >> "ralph" <nt_consulting64(a)yahoo.net> wrote in message >> news:96ndp5546ejmhcoccqbtkifl1tq9sng1pv(a)4ax.com... >>> It used to be available as a free-download. >>> [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ee410535.aspx] ??? >> >> It's still freely downloadable from the link you provided. > > I've just downloaded ALL the items on that page. In these days of > massive hard drives, plus DVD blanks for a few cents/pennies each, > I've got nothing to lose by grabbing them while they're still > available. They've already been taken down, at least once. Last time I noticed, I rattled cages at MSFT until someone woke-up, and promised to get them back online. Of course, no one knew where they were at that point. So I pointed them to http://vb.mvps.org/tools/ControlsAndComponents.asp. Notice any similarities? Yeah, they didn't know what the binaries were, anymore, either. It's good to know I'm not the *only* one providing backup storage for them anymore. ;-) -- ..NET: It's About Trust! http://vfred.mvps.org |