Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

HagenP — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:16:54 GMT

DWalker59:

"Ideally, a Bug report or a Connect issue should be opened. That way, someone from the right department within Microsoft will be given the task of responding to the issue, and maybe it will be added as a bug and considered for future fixing."

For a lot of things Microsoft does not make it exactly easy to open a bug report. Also I have seen Connect (WDK) issues untouched for several months.

However, I've had some excellent experiences giving feedback to MSDN documentation pages.

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

Falcon — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 07:43:47 GMT

@porter: I wouldn't expect a taxi driver to know every place and/or street address off the top of their head, however they should know the city's general layout. This, combined with with directories/maps/GPS navigators, would be the optimal strategy, which fits in with Raymond's point in the article. I myself would not blindly follow a GPS navigator's directions - I can optimise the route using knowledge that they don't have!

As a passenger, I'll often give a taxi driver directions, particularly when we get close to home - being arrogant by asserting that they should know how to get there and refusing to assist them would not help me efficiently achieve my goal of getting to the destination.

In many cases where I use a taxi service, I could very well make the trip as a driver myself (a common obstacle to driving being prior ingestion of ethanol!)

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

ulric — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:37:54 GMT

I have a question about this LargeAddressAware and GetCursorPos issue.

what's the risk of getting high memory address if your 32-bit process is not using a lot memory? I mean, the addresses we get are not physical addresses, so the load of the system should not really matter, should it?

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

GregM — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:56:45 GMT

DWalker, it was reported to connect, back in February, and was fixed for Windows 7. The backport to Vista was rejected. (I found this information through a Google search on GetCursorPos and LARGEADDRESSAWARE.)

Thanks to the person who reported about it here, this is the second time in a couple months that we've replaced GetCursorPos calls in our application, the first time to use GetMessagePos instead, and this time to work around the bug.

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

Torvin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:02:53 GMT

@Dan: why do you need an overlay anyways? maybe SetCapture() would be just enough for you?

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

porter — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:48:25 GMT

>> There are thousands of API calls. Do you really expect every programmer to know exactly which one to call for any possible problem that may come up?

There are thousands of places in this city. Do you seriously expect every taxi driver to know them how to get to them?

Yes, that's their job.

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

Anon — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:39:41 GMT

> I've watched for the past decade or so as programming forums fielded homework questions. There is always someone who will answer.

> So now we've got quite a few "graduates" that just got someone else to do their homework for them.

The sad thing about these people is that they will quickly get promoted to management where they will brag about how the "come from a technical background" when really all they ever did was pass any work they had to someone else. Of course the worst case is that they end up analyzing requests from customers. Since they have no idea how to solve problems, they also have no idea how to do time estimates. Needless to say it is considered very rude to comment on their abilities or lack thereof.

Meh, the software industry sucks.

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

steveg — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:07:55 GMT

"I wonder how it is these people manage to write programs at all. I get the impression they write code by asking a million tiny questions and cutting and pasting together all the replies."

The internet's to blame. If technical documentation was still in book form people would be more inclined to browse. IMO. That's how I learnt the Win16 API, browsing through the paper manuals.

Heck, I don't even read a book on the toilet anymore, just my laptop...

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

Toukarin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:39:15 GMT

"I wonder how it is these people manage to write programs at all. I get the impression they write code by asking a million tiny questions and cutting and pasting together all the replies."

Sadly that's how the majority of how the 'programmers' in the industry work, and contribute to thedailywtf.com.

And that's precisely how a colleague of mine does 'programming'. And he has a PhD in Computer Science from one of the top 50 universities. Incredible.

re: Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

Worf — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:18:29 GMT

Yeah. no one explores anymore.

I once gave new hires a simple quiz on things that they can find on the server... it's all there, but unless you read and index the stuff and not monkey around, you'll never know. I found those people became much better exployees after I showed them how to explore our servers.

Just simple stuff, like where can I find the datasheet for a chip by manufacturer (our datasheets are arranged by manufacturer, but I don't expect people to know the manufacturer on the first day. It also gives them something they can search against...).

Mostly because I got frustrated at those who kept pestering me for datasheets or other stuff without even doing a cursory look at the server where I showed them the other datasheet.