You’ve probably seen programmers calmly writing code at 200 keystrokes per minute to solve hideously complex problems under strict deadlines, and the programs they wrote run perfectly on the first try, often only a few seconds before something blows up real good…| Lack of Imagination
A popular trope in science fiction movies set in space is running diagnostics whenever something goes wrong with a ship’s systems. The chief engineer might announce something like, “We’ve run a level 2 diagnostic on the thermal regulators…| Lack of Imagination
Software development would be a lot easier without so many bugs. In a typical software application, there’s a never-ending stream of bugs as far as the eye can see. Some of the bugs make users’ lives miserable, some of them are annoying but can be dealt with workarounds, and the rest are mostly minor inconveniences…| Lack of Imagination
When you work with software developers, especially those with less experience, it’s virtually guaranteed to hear one of them utter a version of the above expression when someone presents them with a situation they think is impossible (or more likely, improbable) to happen in the program they’ve written…| Lack of Imagination
I started programming in GW-BASIC on an IBM PC clone running MS-DOS. Back then, many so-called home and business computers came bundled with a BASIC interpreter, mostly made by or licensed from Microsoft. They all looked similar. You were greeted by a screen with a READY or OK prompt and a blinking cursor waiting for your input. The “screen editor” and interpreter were all in one in the true sense of the word – they weren’t bolted together like the separate text editors and interprete...| Lack of Imagination