At 14:18 +0200 2001-05-02, Arthur van Leeuwen wrote:
>
>What I think Derek is hinting at is that every programmer has a tendency to
>actually understand only parts of the program and assume other parts will
>behave properly.
Such as the C compiler itself?
> As anecdotal evidence: must bugs I encounter have to do
>with assuming I understand what a piece of code does (and the assumptions
>usually are quite reasonable) and finding out that assumption is wrong.
>Even then I usually don't need to fully understand what's going on, just
>what's going *wrong*.
>
>Other than that there are obviously different levels of understanding. I
>understand the way computers work on a general level, but I wouldn't say
>I actually understand what the north bridge connecting my processor to the
>memory bus and the south bridge does precisely.
>
>Doei, Arthur.
Yes, as with most things of any complexity (e.g. engineering and psychology).
And example C code such as
printf ("....
is hardly C code, whereas
int i = 0;
i++;
inj j = -1;
j = i;
if (i == j) { ...
is a good place to start.
Gordo.
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