Comments on: Delete bugs and broken code

By: web design yorkshire

web design yorkshire — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:45:53 +0000

Theres some good tips in there.

I’m a semi pro web developer, and I find that just getting up, walking away and coming back after relaxing really helps. Its like looking at your code with news eyes, and you’d be suprised how easy it is to spot silly mistakes. I code PHP and find that dreamweaver can sometimes help debugging, if not, just get a friend to check over it

Keep up the good work on the site too

By: Bobrobyn

Bobrobyn — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:52:44 +0000

My prof for Data Structures this year basically said the same thing. People seem to think that if they shorten the number of keys they press, they are doing less work. However, often times it’s faster and takes less thought to just rewrite the broken code. The only thing I’d recommend is to make a backup of your broken code “just in case”. If it’s an assignment being done at the last minute, sometimes handing in code that has a couple of bugs is better than handing in no code, or code that doesn’t compile.

(Of course, for the real world….)

By: James (StealthArcher)

James (StealthArcher) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 05:58:41 +0000

Heh, have had to do this a couple of times on practice programs.

I find that McKensie solution works well for me though, as I have never liked to have any options cut off from me.

But I find that if something confuses me, leave for a day or two, do other stuff (game on supcomm for example) and come back later. and it all makes sense.

Now that I’ve heard about it, seems that the teddy bear sitting in the hallway will get some attention now .

By: Mitch Wheat

Mitch Wheat — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:38:11 +0000

McKenzie, that is what Source Code Control is for!

I agree with your comment about Clutter. As Steve McConnell said in “Code Complete”: If the comment and code disagree, then they are both probbaly wrong!

By: McKenzie

McKenzie — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:49:40 +0000

One minor point that makes the deleting less painful. Save your program as a new version and delete the buggy code in the new version. Although you will almost never go back to the old version it is comforting to know that you can. Commenting out the buggy mess is OK too, but I find the clutter can distract you.

By: dontmiss

dontmiss — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:48:15 +0000

Of course this only apply to your own code or for a code where you have a really good knowledge of the entire code involved.

Or sometime, you have some function that doesn’t interfere to much with the other code (get some params, return some others).

I had this recently too, I was falling asleep on some complex function made from various version I did before, I rewrote all from scratch the next morning in a much more efficient way.

By: engtech

engtech — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:45:13 +0000

rewrites only work if it’s your second time solving the problem

rewriting someone else’s broken code means your also leaving out what might potentially be code to handle a dozen corner cases you haven’t thought of because it’s your first time solving the problem.

By: Adam Mckerlie

Adam Mckerlie — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:38:52 +0000

Here’s an example of when it’s better just to delete code than to try and debug it:

I was writing an algorithm for finding the shortest path through a bunch of airport stops. It was two days before it was due and it was around 3am. I basically just spit out a tonne of code, and then fell asleep.

The next morning I came back to my code and tried to get it to work. After two hours and looking through the horribly coded algorithm I decided to delete it and try again. It took me one hour to write the new algorithm. It worked, was more efficient and was about half of the code.

It probably would have taken me another at least 5 hours to re-write the previously poorly coded algorithm instead of the one hour it took me to write a new one.

The moral of this story is 1) Delete your code if it’s more efficient just to re-write it and 2) Don’t code at 3am

By: Darcy

Darcy — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:14:47 +0000

Just make sure you’ve got a complete set of unit tests for the code you’re deleting. Otherwise, if you’re scrapping real, production code, you’re likely deleting years of bug fixing along with the one bug you need to deal with.