[Info-vax] [OT] Program debugging, was: Re: HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Paul Sture]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012 11:26:48 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:

> On 2012-08-24, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>
>> I know of places and people who are known for their skills, including
>> people who even invented some of the programming languages used today,
>> as well as doing the compilers you use. And I still don't see any
>> programs that works right the first time.
>>
>>
> My programs generally don't work the first time, but thinking through
> the actual results instead of the expected results and looking at my
> code does reveal the problem rather quickly in a surprising number of
> cases, including in embedded code, without having to resort to a
> debugger.

That's the sort of thing I was talking about.  The debugger simply isn't 
the first thing I reach for.
 
> I do find a LED handy for debugging interrupt handlers sometimes
> however.

That's akin to print statements to see that you are getting what you 
expect.

I did once write a reasonably complex bit of DCL in one go and was amazed 
to see it work as intended on the very first run.  Normally I would have 
expected at least one typo.  It did break a few months later, but that 
was because new data in a totally unexpected format started appearing.

-- 
Paul Sture