J
jacob navia
We know from my last installments, that there are some people here that
go around telling "there is no stack in C", because the word "stack"
doesn't appear in the C standard.
Apparently, more or less the same people, start telling that
it is enough to read the code to be able to debug a program,
without using such low level tools like a debugger.
Having written a debugger, and passed countless hours of my professional
life using those tools (gdb, dbx, msvc, and many others) I am
suprised that people like Mr Bos can say in this forum
that it is sufficient to READ the code to be able to debug it.
This was translated by Mr Bos into:
" its author is (by his own admission, in
that other thread) incapable of READING code beyond 2000 lines"
I complained that this was a LIE, i.e. a complete misrepresentation of
what I said.
Mr Heathfield and Mr Bos answered, (in substance) that since I could not
debug a program of more than 1500-2000 lines without a debugger I am
unavle to read it, since if I would be able to read it I would spot
the bug immediately.
Now, question for the people that keep a small part of common sense
here:
Is *reading* a program the *same* as *DEBUGGING* a program?
Are serious people here willing to believe this stories of people
debugging huge code bases without a debugger?
I stay by my position:
A code base bigger than 1500 lines is no longer debuggable in an
abstract sense just by reading code. It needs a debugger.
Note that we suppose a real-time, event-driven code execution,
where you can have faulty libraries, faulty interrupts servicing
programs, etc. ANYTHING.
go around telling "there is no stack in C", because the word "stack"
doesn't appear in the C standard.
Apparently, more or less the same people, start telling that
it is enough to read the code to be able to debug a program,
without using such low level tools like a debugger.
Having written a debugger, and passed countless hours of my professional
life using those tools (gdb, dbx, msvc, and many others) I am
suprised that people like Mr Bos can say in this forum
that it is sufficient to READ the code to be able to debug it.
> "It is impossible for any human to DEBUG a program written by others
> without a debugger, of course if the program has a certain size
> (bigger than, say, 1500 -2000 lines)"
This was translated by Mr Bos into:
" its author is (by his own admission, in
that other thread) incapable of READING code beyond 2000 lines"
I complained that this was a LIE, i.e. a complete misrepresentation of
what I said.
Mr Heathfield and Mr Bos answered, (in substance) that since I could not
debug a program of more than 1500-2000 lines without a debugger I am
unavle to read it, since if I would be able to read it I would spot
the bug immediately.
Now, question for the people that keep a small part of common sense
here:
Is *reading* a program the *same* as *DEBUGGING* a program?
Are serious people here willing to believe this stories of people
debugging huge code bases without a debugger?
I stay by my position:
A code base bigger than 1500 lines is no longer debuggable in an
abstract sense just by reading code. It needs a debugger.
Note that we suppose a real-time, event-driven code execution,
where you can have faulty libraries, faulty interrupts servicing
programs, etc. ANYTHING.