Richard,
Tell me you're really not this dense ...
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001 15:29:57 +0100 (CET), [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Richard Menedetter) wrote:
> Why don't you simply say 'sorry bernie, it was my fault, hope that
> everything is OK now'
Why don't I? Because it wasn't my fault. It was a case of very poor
design on the part of the CLR.BAT program.
Michael has always touted Arachne as not only the internet browser
for DOS, but the browser which can be personally configured to each user.
APMs are integral to fleshing out the package, experimentation and
refinement is the norm and not the exception. Under those conditions,
having a program which could allow a typo to wipe every file out of the
main directory was a serious error.
What angers me is when someone says "we can't duplicate that," or "the
fault has to lie with something you did," and they say it without
thinking -- without stopping to realize the software needs to run on a
variety of systems with a variety of users, none of which does things
precisely like the others. It *is* impossible to "idiot proof" a
program; people smart enough to do the work cannot conceive all the
possible things an idiot can do. I used to use a destructively minded
4th grader to do "idiot testing," rewarding him every time he could make
a module crash ... but he's long since passed that stage, and now
writes "cheat codes" for use with GameShark and such. He just wants me
to set up his Arachne to do its job, period.
People like Roger and Glenn and Bernie "know the rules" for Arachne and
may push the envelope a bit at times, but I was always trained to "test
to destruction" ... however, back then I had a senior programmer who
took the failure reports and reviewed all applicable code, did the
fixes, and had me test again. Here I have to do more of the work
myself. I also get paid a heckuva lot less for doing it here!
Some people have never been able to understand that the best way to
learn about a program or a process is to have something go wrong. If
you never actually have a flat tire, you'll never learn of that "spare
in a can" will work, or if you can operate the jack to change the tire
yourself. Just because something "is supposed to" work a certain way,
or be treated in a certain way, does *not* mean it always will -- or
often EVER will -- completely. My "bumbling" and "screw ups," and likes
and and dislikes, have had some positive effect on the development of
options for Arachne, if not the entire official package.
Most programmers will admit, if they have the time to, that they are not
the best people to test the software that they write. Why? Because
they know precisely what the software is expected to do, and what the
software expects the user to do -- and when they test it they don't
think to do anything "stupid" or "wrong" or "just plain dumb" ... things
like knowing the "name" field is supposed to be alpha only, so they
don't prevent numeric entries from being accepted by the program and
thus messing something up somewhere along the way. That's why the best
software is that which is tested by someone who doesn't know anything
about it.
That last constraint may soon make me less than a good tester, since I'm
having to learn more and more about Arachne to find the problems and do
the fixes myself.
Think of it this way: Soon I won't have to bother anyone with bug
reports or stories of mass destruction; I'll just fix it ONLY for myself
and won't need to bother anyone else with warnings or such.
Bernie, are you listening? The thing that gets me so frustrated with
you is that you are smart, you have the capability of going far, but you
still don't seem able to "think outside the box" much of the time. If
something is contrary to what you've learned in school, or what you've
been told is supposed to happen, you don't honestly investigate it to
see if there could possibly be *any* truth in what is being presented to
you. And that limits you, and you shouldn't be limited like that.
Instead of thinking "She had to have done something wrong," you should
be thinking "What part of the program could have possibly allowed her to
do something that was so destructive?" If you'd let yourself do so, you
could learn new interesting "absolutely worthless" information every day
that could actually provide a solution tomorrow or down the road. I've
been writing and using BATch programs extensively for almost 20 years
now; yet, until I figured out what caused the "disappearance" this week,
I'd never even stopped to think "What is the worst thing that can happen
if a batch file is expecting three variables and only received two?"
And you want to know something funnier -- I'm embarassed to admit it
took me so long to check on that, because I do have two programs I use
*all* the time which make provisions to handle precisely that lack of
required variable! [In their case the consequences would not have been
destructive however, just a matter of not doing the desired thing -- so
'possibilities' were used to provide built in "help" files.]
Finally, as to the "nettiquette" of short sigblocks: That originated
way back when 300 bps was good speed, when computers ran at 4.7MHz, when
a FD was 320K and many BBS sysops limited forum messages to 25 lines.
Those days are gone, as is the need to save every byte of storage space
possible. I would rather be downloading mail where every sigblock was
12 lines, than downloading messages which take 175 lines to say "Hello,
how are you?" because they're sent in html with a graphic signature
appended just to bloat them a bit more. And e-mail is not like forums:
It isn't stored anywhere long enough to allow 50 or 1,000 people to read
the message. It is shipped out, stored for a few hours on the receiving
server, stored on the HDD long enough to read it, and then *poof* it's
all gone bye-bye. Plus, requesting people to keep the sigblock to 4
lines with Arachne is limiting them to 2 lines -- Arachne appends two
lines of its own whether the user likes it or not, or one line if the
user is "registered." If Arachne is ever able to access the NGs, then
that will be a different matter ... we'll hope that Arachne won't append
any lines then except precisely what the user may want [like
non-harvestable e-mail address work-arounds].
In life we have a few options for handling situations that "grate" on
us. We can try to change things, we can allow them to irritate and
annoy us without attempting to change things, or we can ignore them.
We don't always make the right choices. And if you never annoy anyone
over something, it's not likely you are doing anything of substance.
l.d.
P.S. How many newbies are going to follow Michael's suggestion and hang
around the list to ask questions when they see "regulars" being put
down?
P.P.S. Any of you wondering why Arachne doesn't clean up after itself
as well as it used to when you exited, might want to consider checking
out the last few lines of Arachne.bat ....
:end
if exist $roura?.bat del $roura?.bat
if exist *._$b del *._$b
if exist %ARACHNETEMP%\*._$b del %ARACHNETEMP%\*._$b
if exist %TEMP%\ARACHNE.TMP\*._$b del %TEMP%\*._$b
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Do *you* see the problem? It should read:
if exist %TEMP%\ARACHNE.TMP\*._$b del %TEMP%\ARACHNE.TMP\*._$b
Was that poor programming on Michael's part? NO! It was a mistake that
he happened to miss because he has stared at the same code thousands of
times and, as many of us do, he saw what he expected to see and not what
was.
-- Arachne V1.70, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
