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> Imagine if you used a library with a function called sortAlphabetically that didn't sort items alphabetically, it wouldn't make sense. And imagine if it used

by geocar 12y ago

> Imagine if you used a library with a function called sortAlphabetically that didn't sort items alphabetically, it wouldn't make sense. And imagine if it used [binarySearch](http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2006/06/extra-extra-rea...) as part of it's implementation? Then `sortAlphabetically` would be broken, and people might waste a lot of energy looking everywhere else instead of just looking at the data and reading the code. > Imagine a situation where a bunch of constants for an API are defined as such: Are really all of those definitions helpful? If I want to search for `/getUser` in a program, I might do `grep -r getUser .` and then learn that I need to repeat that with `grep -r kURLAPIGetUser .` -- was that really better? If `/getUser` is being used in more than one place, then maybe we should talk about that problem of duplicating effort. If it isn't, then the define is absolutely worthless.

Dylan16807 12y ago
This is such a subtle problem that countless people implementing binary searches didn't think about it, yet you think reading an unlabeled blob of code will make people notice?
- geocar 12y ago
  Yes, I think if programmers do not actually read code, they will not notice the bugs in it. Considering the binary search more deeply, http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/154.full.pdf http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/154.full.pdf is useful; De Angelos search (family 4) was a successful search, but it contains this bug. Implementations based on families 1 and 2 but perhaps trying to be less clever would not.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    That's not what I asked. Do you think they will find the bugs just because of rereading a standard algorithm? Having to reread code when trying to accomplish something unrelated seems like a terrible way to seek out bugs.

by geocar 12y ago

Dylan16807 12y ago

This is such a subtle problem that countless people implementing binary searches didn't think about it, yet you think reading an unlabeled blob of code will make people notice?

geocar 12y ago
Yes, I think if programmers do not actually read code, they will not notice the bugs in it. Considering the binary search more deeply, http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/154.full.pdf http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/154.full.pdf is useful; De Angelos search (family 4) was a successful search, but it contains this bug. Implementations based on families 1 and 2 but perhaps trying to be less clever would not.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  That's not what I asked. Do you think they will find the bugs just because of rereading a standard algorithm? Having to reread code when trying to accomplish something unrelated seems like a terrible way to seek out bugs.