Death by 1000 Programming Sins

[Mathhead200]

For some reason that one doesn't get me, although I occasionally forget the private on Java member thinking that it's the default...
Why don't other languages have package private members? Screw friends!

[kfmfe04]

ty, helios, for doing that sanity check for me - I am using ext3 on that drive, but it's a 1.5TB USB drive - perhaps the built-in buffering of the drive is impacting my results...

[khamara]

wow....what a read just so I can add:

153. not checking return values
154. not catching exceptions you throw or assuming something catches it
155. not attempting any code coverage tests

I think you can add all the 'Effective C++' and 'More Effective C++' stuff by Scott Meyers.

Number 153 is amusing when applied to 'new' some would just say "add more memory". And same for performance => "upgrade the server".

As for large classes, this is a tradeoff when considering simplicity. I created a reasonably large class when fixing someone's library in return I was able to see more of what the lib was doing, I streamlined the locking, removed 8 or so classes (thus removing 16 files - 8 headers and 8 impl files), the code was safer, easier, less buggy and it made me happier.

[khamara]

156. add copyright to your files

[lnk2019]

157. Leaving an ASCII Panda in your comments to annoy the next intern who will have the misfortune of working with your code.

[kfmfe04]

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[3hM2Nwbp]

158.

lnk2019 wrote:

157. Leaving an ASCII Panda porn in your comments to annoy the next intern who will have the misfortune of working with your code.

PS. Nice Panda

[khamara]

159. don't volunteer or do more work than you can handle.
160. don't assume you can handle more work


( No wonder I get nothing done :D )

[z05DSL3A]

156. add copyright to your files

a Programming sin? but anyway, in the UK at least, the code has copyrights automatically without the need to add a notice to it. If you didn't want it to have IP rights you would have to explicitly relinquish them.

[lnk2019]

Grey Wolf wrote:

a Programming sin? but anyway, in the UK at least, the code has copyrights automatically without the need to add a notice to it. If you didn't want it to have IP rights you would have to explicitly relinquish them.

Then we're all living in sin! :D

[kfmfe04]

161. ill-defined copy-semantics for an object (the worst of which is falling back to the default copy-constructor generated by the compiler by accident)

should an object do a shallow-copy or a deep-copy for an object?
or should copying be disallowed via private methods?

if these policies are not clearly defined, it's very easy to segfault when using these objects in STL

[kfmfe04]

162. failing to implement a proper strictly-less-than operator() on your class while using that class as a key for stl map or stl set

doing so will lead to all sorts of unspeakable run-time evils

[S6k9GNh0]

163. Taking someones hard and well-deserved work and calling it your own for the e-peen.

[QWERTYman]

164. Not immediately putting a delete after every use of new.

[hamsterman]

@QWERTYman, you're forgetting smart pointers..

@computerquip, aren't we floating away from the "programming" part of the thread's title?

@kfmfe, in debug mode, isn't it always asserted that if a < b, b is not < a? I'm sure I had problems with that.. Or is this what you meant by unspeakable evils?

[kfmfe04]

suppose you had two data variables in MyClass, two ints, m_x and m_y - just right off the top of my head, I might try:

bool operator<( const MyClass& rhs ) const {
  return m_x<rhs.m_x && m_y<rhs.m_y;
}

finding all sorts of strange behavior when I insert into or search a map, I try this instead:

bool operator<( const MyClass& rhs ) const {
  return m_x<rhs.m_x || m_y<rhs.m_y;
}

turns out that this doesn't work, either! By now, I realized that I have stepped into some C++ doo-doo and need to think carefully how to implement strictly-less-than.

In the specific case I was trying to implement, I was playing with a couple of enums, which obfuscates the issue a little bit more.

Something seemingly obvious turns out to be not so obvious after all...
(not the first or the last time this has happened in C++)

edit: I thought I wouldn't give away the solution here in this thread - I'm sure there are several ways to do it right, but one way I found that worked can be seen in this thread, if anyone needs ideas:

http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/44785/

[kfmfe04]

Mathhead200 wrote:

Why don't other languages have package private members? Screw friends!

The D Programming Language certainly has package level protection:

http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/attribute.html

[hamsterman]

@kfmfe, I meant that if I have code

#include <set>

struct Silly{
   int x, y;

   Silly(int x, int y) : x(x), y(y) {}

   bool operator < (const Silly& s) const{
      return x < s.x || y < s.y;
   }
};

int main(){
   std::set<Silly> s;
   s.insert( Silly( 1, 2 ) );
   s.insert( Silly( 2, 1 ) );
   return 0;
}

I get " Debug Assertion Failed! <...> Invalid operator < ".
This works fine with && though, so I see your point.

[coder777]

165. Hopping on the newest technique
166. Not hopping on the newest technique

[Albatross]

Hah! I only hop with one foot on the newest techniques!

-Albatross