On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Drew Lawson <[email protected]> wrote:
> Maybe I'm just psychic, or it could be because I made a bunch of > newby mistakes 2-3 months ago, but it doesn't sound meaningless to > me. It's meaningless because it does not address what the OP is actually seeing. Essentially, the term "randomly disappearing" tells fellow developers nothing in the same way "it crashed" tells us nothing. Sure, we know somehow something seems to have disappeared or the application crashed, but without our collective crystal ball, we can tell the OP nothing in return. > An object is there and valid, another method and it is still valid, > another breakpoint and still valid, next breakpoint it is junk. At > least in managed memory (all I've used for Cocoa), it is a pretty > standard behaviour for a temporary object that is being kept but > not retained. Yes, i.e., a memory-management-related issue (which is the most likely guess at the OP's problem). Hence the advice to re-read the docs and, if necessary, rephrase the question to be more specific (so we have a snowball's chance in hell of being more specific ourselves). Being a newbie is fine. Not understanding is fine. Not yet having solid question-asking skills is also fine. Let's not, however, defend a weak question. Let's instead inform the asker that they need to be specific with questions about their problems using a complicated technology. It's not a reflection on the asker, just that strong technical-question-asking is as much a required skill as any other in software development and must be developed for obvious practical reasons. Respectful pointers to the documentation and an equally-respectful request for clarification is exactly the right kind of help this question needs. > What I didn't get is that it doesn't matter if the method creates, > allocates, etc. It matters if the method name starts with "alloc," > "create," etc. Ack! Wrong. As mentioned in the list rules, don't try to paraphrase or rephrase the memory management rules. It's too easy to get it wrong (like you just did) and send someone off on a wild goose chase, causing needless traffic. Memory Management Rules http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/MemoryMgmt/Articles/mmRules.html If there are specific questions about a specific situation (i.e., "what do I do in *this* case with *this* code?"), that's when it's good to clarify how the rules (or the class reference) applies. Otherwise, just cite the rules for clarity. -- I.S. _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list ([email protected]) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [email protected]
