4 ms·

I blame this twitter thread :P https://twitter.com/Gankro/status/831955401109360640 https://twitter.com/Gankro/status/831955401109360640

Gankro 10y ago
I have no regrets. Everyone should get to know the fear and joy of this Makefile.
tambourine_man 10y ago
That was it indeed :)
estsauver 10y ago
The thing I actually kind of think is amazing is that someone said "This isn't working... why don't I try putting in a $(nop) here...?"
- chc 10y ago
  Maybe there was something else there before, and it stopped working when they removed it, so they tried adding back the most minimal thing they could think of as a sanity check.
  - hn_user2 10y ago
    "Why doesn't this work?". Add debug statement. "Huh, now this works". Take out debug statement. "Huh, now it doesn't work". Try no-op. Table flip. Commit.
    - Beltiras 10y ago
      I love Heisenbugs because I have seen one in the wild. It's the most absurd thing ever.
  - josefx 10y ago
    Maybe they even knew that white space would work. However some people (including me) wouldn't even look twice before they remove white space. An explicit no-op on the other hand would get my attention.
- OskarS 10y ago
  I don't think using noops to get the parser to co-operate is that strange at all, especially not something like a makefile where whitespace is significant. It's the whole point of the `pass` noop in python: the Python grammar expects there to be something inside a loop, so if you want an empty one, you have to throw a noop in there.
  - xg15 10y ago
    > the Python grammar expects there to be something inside a loop I think this is the underlying issue - the "well, it's a list, so there's got to be something inside the list too" mindset, which makes sense in the real world but is stupid in programming. (Some bad memories at old Visual Basic times come to mind too)

4 ms·

I blame this twitter thread :P https://twitter.com/Gankro/status/831955401109360640 https://twitter.com/Gankro/status/831955401109360640

by pitterpatter 10y ago

Gankro 10y ago
I have no regrets. Everyone should get to know the fear and joy of this Makefile.
tambourine_man 10y ago
That was it indeed :)
estsauver 10y ago
The thing I actually kind of think is amazing is that someone said "This isn't working... why don't I try putting in a $(nop) here...?"
- chc 10y ago
  Maybe there was something else there before, and it stopped working when they removed it, so they tried adding back the most minimal thing they could think of as a sanity check.
  - hn_user2 10y ago
    "Why doesn't this work?". Add debug statement. "Huh, now this works". Take out debug statement. "Huh, now it doesn't work". Try no-op. Table flip. Commit.
    - Beltiras 10y ago
      I love Heisenbugs because I have seen one in the wild. It's the most absurd thing ever.
  - josefx 10y ago
    Maybe they even knew that white space would work. However some people (including me) wouldn't even look twice before they remove white space. An explicit no-op on the other hand would get my attention.
- OskarS 10y ago
  I don't think using noops to get the parser to co-operate is that strange at all, especially not something like a makefile where whitespace is significant. It's the whole point of the `pass` noop in python: the Python grammar expects there to be something inside a loop, so if you want an empty one, you have to throw a noop in there.
  - xg15 10y ago
    > the Python grammar expects there to be something inside a loop I think this is the underlying issue - the "well, it's a list, so there's got to be something inside the list too" mindset, which makes sense in the real world but is stupid in programming. (Some bad memories at old Visual Basic times come to mind too)