On Sep 18, 2005, at 5:03 PM, Tim Newsham wrote:
I've had more practice in analytical and exploratory programming
in the last two years than I ever wanted. And then there's
always a certain amount of fear that you're going to program
something wrong and burn it up.
You get over this when you finally do.
Get over it? I hope not. That's the best part about programming!
It's nice to be able to ask the question online in hopes of making
your life easier, but if you haven't figured out the answer before
someone else answers it for you, you're not working in an exciting
field :)
Naw, when you finally do let the smoke out of something (via
software), you get over the fear.
The caution stays, but the fear is gone.
And yeah, mine was a $250k "beta" box.
they were sorta glad that I managed to find the equivalent of a HCF
instruction.
The thing you're talking about is 1/2 the joy of programming. The
other half (for me) is the joy that knowing that most of the time,
the mistakes are my own. You're more certain of this with "open
source" or free software, of course. Nothing quite like the compiler
bugs you have to work around because the vendor won't fix them.
Jim
(HCF = Halt and Catch Fire)
