4 ms·
It's omnipotence without omniscience, though. Any reasonably complex program will grow beyond the programmer's ability to keep it all in his head at once.
by prospero 18y ago
It's omnipotence without omniscience, though. Any reasonably complex program will grow beyond the programmer's ability to keep it all in his head at once.
- Jebdm 18y agoAh, but if you run it slowly enough (step through it, for instance), you get the same thing in effect; anything you want to know you can find out before anything changes.
- aaronblohowiak 18y agoAssuming a REPL, and methods of introspection that do not otherwise change state of the system!
- cconstantine 18y agoYou don't need a REPL to step through a program.
- aaronblohowiak 18y agoYou're absolutely right. Sorry, I had repressed those memories ;)
- prospero 18y agoYou can easily lose the big picture by stepping through each line of code, especially if your program is heavily iterative or even mildly threaded. You can miss the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest; the middle ground is elusive at best.
- jwilliams 18y agoYup - you can't find a race condition by stepping through your code.
- Eliezer 18y agoCan I quote you on that as "Computer programming is omnipotence without omniscience"?
- prospero 18y agoSure, go hog wild.