4 ms·

"As a programmer, you learn to blame your code first, second, and third... and somewhere around 10,000th you blame the compiler. Well down the list after that,

"As a programmer, you learn to blame your code first, second, and third... and somewhere around 10,000th you blame the compiler. Well down the list after that, you blame the hardware." I dunno, as an embedded programmer working on new HW and sometimes with a custom compiler, blaming the HW became the 5th thing, and the compiler the 6th...

icarus127 13y ago
I was thinking the same thing. At my last job we had one dev board (TI ARM/DSP SOC + lots of custom hardware) that we could reset with a static discharge into the carpet 6 - 8 feet away. That took us a while to figure out :p
jakejake 13y ago
I'd probably be more likely to blame the hardware or compiler if my work was programming new hardware or custom compilers! I think the situation is that if you're quick to blame others for a problem which turns out to be your own mistake - it has a tendency to really piss off co-workers. Experienced programmers learn to challenge their own code first as a habit out of consideration for others on their team. It's embarrassing to swear up and down that there is a hardware/compiler/whatever problem, only to have a bunch of people look into it and find a mistake that you made.
- Zak 13y ago
  I think it's more a matter of hardware and compilers usually being widely-used and well-tested. You're just not very likely to discover a bug in an Intel CPU or GCC, while you're newly-written code, being newly-written code hasn't been well-tested yet. If you're using one-off hardware or a brand new compiler, it isn't so unreasonable to suspect those pieces of having bugs.
- rat87 13y ago
  The playstation was out dec 94(japan)/Sep 95(North America) Crash came out in 96. I think it ha a custom compiler called ccpsx(found based on googling around).
gregsq 13y ago
Yes. Clocks and reactances in circuit always spring to mind as likely candidates almost immediately when you include hardware. A PCB's EMI can be altered measurably by software decisions. An acquaintance asked the other day why his toshiba portable was locking up in boot. First question I asked was did you change the ram clocks in the bios. Many have seen timing and slew with all it's reasons while overclocking. Nothing at all to do with quantum effects, per se.

icarus127 13y ago

I was thinking the same thing. At my last job we had one dev board (TI ARM/DSP SOC + lots of custom hardware) that we could reset with a static discharge into the carpet 6 - 8 feet away. That took us a while to figure out :p

jakejake 13y ago

I'd probably be more likely to blame the hardware or compiler if my work was programming new hardware or custom compilers! I think the situation is that if you're quick to blame others for a problem which turns out to be your own mistake - it has a tendency to really piss off co-workers. Experienced programmers learn to challenge their own code first as a habit out of consideration for others on their team. It's embarrassing to swear up and down that there is a hardware/compiler/whatever problem, only to have a bunch of people look into it and find a mistake that you made.

Zak 13y ago
I think it's more a matter of hardware and compilers usually being widely-used and well-tested. You're just not very likely to discover a bug in an Intel CPU or GCC, while you're newly-written code, being newly-written code hasn't been well-tested yet. If you're using one-off hardware or a brand new compiler, it isn't so unreasonable to suspect those pieces of having bugs.
rat87 13y ago
The playstation was out dec 94(japan)/Sep 95(North America) Crash came out in 96. I think it ha a custom compiler called ccpsx(found based on googling around).

gregsq 13y ago

Yes. Clocks and reactances in circuit always spring to mind as likely candidates almost immediately when you include hardware. A PCB's EMI can be altered measurably by software decisions. An acquaintance asked the other day why his toshiba portable was locking up in boot. First question I asked was did you change the ram clocks in the bios. Many have seen timing and slew with all it's reasons while overclocking. Nothing at all to do with quantum effects, per se.