4 ms·

I worked with a guy who, after having been at the company for 6 months, called me over to his desk to help with a "problem." He wondered why he was getting a s

by d23 12y ago

I worked with a guy who, after having been at the company for 6 months, called me over to his desk to help with a "problem." He wondered why he was getting a syntax error. Okay, fair enough. I looked at his screen, and he was putting the arguments to the function OUTSIDE the parentheses. The guy had clearly just been copying and pasting code until "it worked" the entire time he had been there. I almost palmed my face right off of my head.

theVirginian 12y ago
To be fair, I have done that before when just messing around on my own late at night. After working for as long as I had been I felt like reading my own code was like wading through sludge and my eyes just didn't catch the error. I was still however well aware that putting the arguments outside the parentheses is not how this works, not how any of this works.
tormeh 12y ago
That reminds me of how I deal with C's pointer syntax. "Well, it's either * or & or a combination of a low number of the two, let's try a couple of combinations that seems vaguely reasonable... and some that don't, just in case". I don't know who's most at fault: Me or C.
- robbles 12y ago
  rule of thumb: "*" means "look up the area of memory this value points to". "&" means the reverse - "give me a reference to this area of memory". The problem with randomly trying things with pointers is that sometimes you can accidentally fix the issue but introduce a subtle bug that's dependent on the data being stored.
- MaulingMonkey 12y ago
  In case it helps, I've noticed what I'd consider a wart in C that seems to be a common stumbling block with this - including when I first learned C a couple decades ago: * when used for types, has the "opposite" effect when it's used for values/expressions. int* foo; // The addition of a star here, on a type, means we're converting the type /into/ a pointer-to-int /from/ a plain int. int i = *foo; // The addition of a star here, on a value, means we're converting the type /from/ a pointer-to-int /into/ a plain int (reference). I found it much easier to keep the two straight once I segregated their use cases like this. There's a similar duality with & in C++ using references, although not quite as cleanly: int& foo = ...; // The addition of & here, on a type, means we're converting the type /into/ a reference /from/ a plain int. p = &foo; // The addition of & here, on a value, means we're converting the type /from/ a reference /into/ a pointer-to-int. Regardless of "fault", I hope this helps :) (edit: C++ style comments used even in 'C' code to try and prevent YN from treating stars as formatting... replaced a few instances with 'a star'... changed emphasis to use slashes because it's still eating asterisks characters...)
- tracker1 12y ago
  I'm with you.. I'd have to read a refresher on getting started with C if I were to even do something trivial with it... I've been in higher level languages so long (C#, JavaScript, etc)... I find it helpful to understand the concepts sometimes, but would be unlikely to reach for something more low-level than go these days.
- aareet 12y ago
  I'm sure there are several variations but I have a sort of mnemonic to remember this - that * looks like an arrowhead seen head-on and so it "points" to a value. & is then, a reference.
matwood 12y ago
I've been fortunate enough to work on small teams my entire career where someone like you describe simply would not last. I don't think I've come across a person this bad though. Even the 'bad' programmers I've worked with were able make working code, but it was not designed well.

by d23 12y ago

theVirginian 12y ago

To be fair, I have done that before when just messing around on my own late at night. After working for as long as I had been I felt like reading my own code was like wading through sludge and my eyes just didn't catch the error. I was still however well aware that putting the arguments outside the parentheses is not how this works, not how any of this works.

tormeh 12y ago

That reminds me of how I deal with C's pointer syntax. "Well, it's either * or & or a combination of a low number of the two, let's try a couple of combinations that seems vaguely reasonable... and some that don't, just in case". I don't know who's most at fault: Me or C.

robbles 12y ago
rule of thumb: "*" means "look up the area of memory this value points to". "&" means the reverse - "give me a reference to this area of memory". The problem with randomly trying things with pointers is that sometimes you can accidentally fix the issue but introduce a subtle bug that's dependent on the data being stored.
MaulingMonkey 12y ago
In case it helps, I've noticed what I'd consider a wart in C that seems to be a common stumbling block with this - including when I first learned C a couple decades ago: * when used for types, has the "opposite" effect when it's used for values/expressions. int* foo; // The addition of a star here, on a type, means we're converting the type /into/ a pointer-to-int /from/ a plain int. int i = *foo; // The addition of a star here, on a value, means we're converting the type /from/ a pointer-to-int /into/ a plain int (reference). I found it much easier to keep the two straight once I segregated their use cases like this. There's a similar duality with & in C++ using references, although not quite as cleanly: int& foo = ...; // The addition of & here, on a type, means we're converting the type /into/ a reference /from/ a plain int. p = &foo; // The addition of & here, on a value, means we're converting the type /from/ a reference /into/ a pointer-to-int. Regardless of "fault", I hope this helps :) (edit: C++ style comments used even in 'C' code to try and prevent YN from treating stars as formatting... replaced a few instances with 'a star'... changed emphasis to use slashes because it's still eating asterisks characters...)
tracker1 12y ago
I'm with you.. I'd have to read a refresher on getting started with C if I were to even do something trivial with it... I've been in higher level languages so long (C#, JavaScript, etc)... I find it helpful to understand the concepts sometimes, but would be unlikely to reach for something more low-level than go these days.
aareet 12y ago
I'm sure there are several variations but I have a sort of mnemonic to remember this - that * looks like an arrowhead seen head-on and so it "points" to a value. & is then, a reference.

matwood 12y ago

I've been fortunate enough to work on small teams my entire career where someone like you describe simply would not last. I don't think I've come across a person this bad though. Even the 'bad' programmers I've worked with were able make working code, but it was not designed well.