Find the bug - private collaboration | The Coffeehouse

Shaded
Mean ugly geek with axe

Anyone want to exchange private emails to discuss the current Find the bug please leave a comment on my blog.

I can't wait till Friday and I'm sure Tom Christiansen would give me the evil eye if I mailed this one off to him, assuming he fixed his email client to accept messages from outlook.

Anyone ever meet Tom? He from myunderstanding is the #2 contributor to Perl, next to Larry Wall. Quite a character.

ZippyV
Fired Up

My question is: Why perl?

jonathanh
My mod color is red

ZippyV wrote:
My question is: Why perl?

Because when your programs look like line noise, the bugs get REALLY hard to find? Smiley

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Too bad I already sent in my response. I forgot to mention that the fact that it is in Perl to begin with is probably the biggest bug of all.

Semi-related, anyone here familiar with The Daily WTF?

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

jonathanh wrote:

ZippyV wrote: My question is: Why perl?
Because when your programs look like line noise, the bugs get REALLY hard to find?

More of a criticism of regular expressions than of Perl. (All right, the $_ variables are ugly. Which is why I try to avoid them wherever possible.)

Charles
Welcome Change

We decided to use Perl because not everybody programs in C#, VB.NET, JScript, VBScript, MC++ or some other Microsoft language (or C or C++, etc). Expect to see some samples in Java, Python, and other syntaxes.

A bug is a bug is a bug, regardless of language. Not all engineers and students program on our platform using our tools, but this doesn't mean that we don't have a place for them in the Channel 9 community.

We've received some really interesting emails from users who've never posted anything here before. Why? Because we chose to speak their code language.

Diversity makes the world go round. Channel 9 is a place where everybody, regardless of adopted programming paradigm or preferred platform, can interact and learn with others in a fun, safe and friendly way.

Charles

Charles
Welcome Change

Let's talk about something... Do you all like the format of Spot the Bug? That is, do you like sending emails then finding out the bugs after some amount of time? You do understand why we don't open the thread right away, right?

I do think collaboration is a GREAT idea. How would this be best achieved without polluting the answer pool (this means each person gets the opportunity to think up their own solutions without being led down right or wrong paths by others' anwsers) ?

Thoughts?

Charles

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

Two words - cash prizes Smiley

Shaded
Mean ugly geek with axe

ZippyV wrote:
My question is: Why perl?

Because it is the swiss army chainsaw of modern programming languages.

or...

Why not?

Perls Eval function alone I think could land it a place in history for genetic algorithms. Reflection does not hold a candle to the simplicity of Perl's Eval.

I realize this is more of an attribute of the compiled vs interpreted languages, but I would almost kill to get an eval in VB with a computational complexity cost of zero.

Try a regular expression search and replace on a 100 meg logfile, and output it to a new comma delimited file in .net

It may be the only case I could tie a vetren C++ programmer in getting a task done, but hey thats something to me.

Charles: I wish Tom's attitude was as open as your own. I would like to invite him here to take a look but I fear he would find it more of a frustrating insult instead of the high compliment I see it as.

androidi

Spot the bug -- zzzz.

Much more entertaining would be to take a well known design issue in MS product, know a bit what MS currently thinks about it and then get discussion on what could be done about it.

Well perhaps that would not work, but I think it's still more interesting than reading random buggy code..

Anyway Raymond Chen often talks about old stuff like that, but I'd like some talk around the issues in .NET :>

Shaded
Mean ugly geek with axe

Charles wrote:
Let's talk about something... Do you all like the format of Spot the Bug? That is, do you like sending emails then finding out the bugs after some amount of time? You do understand why we don't open the thread right away, right?

I do think collaboration is a GREAT idea. How would this be best achieved without polluting the answer pool (this means each person gets the opportunity to think up their own solutions without being led down right or wrong paths by others' anwsers) ?

Thoughts?

Charles

I love the format. I do understand why they arent opened right away and the LAST thing I want to do is post a spoiler anywhere.

I think collaboration would be best achieved if channel 9 provided some type of moderated <cringe> match-making program where I could find people interesting in sharing their findings.

Everyone knows where their limitations are of their own knowledge. When our confidence drops we should know on our own how much we would like to know and what areas we would like help.

I could see why Channel 9 staff would benefit from seeing this collaboration, but i don't see an easy way of doing it other than some type of <cringe again> match making ability of Channel 9's hosted software or forewarding emails.

I'm not sure too many other people are interested in collaboration. I've not had any responses yet on my blog.

ZippyV
Fired Up

No email, people who want to enter the contest have to be member of this site. Otherwise the membercount will never get higher. Just put a form on a website that every member can submit once.

Jaz
From the depths of Wales I come

how about we have a Find the Bug big challenge where hardhitters like Anders Hejlsberg submit bugs to be found and the winnder gets VS.net 2005 signed copy or something similar

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

One of my favorite perl features: AUTOLOAD.

Charles
Welcome Change

androidi wrote:
Spot the bug -- zzzz.

Much more entertaining would be to take a well known design issue in MS product, know a bit what MS currently thinks about it and then get discussion on what could be done about it.

Well perhaps that would not work, but I think it's still more interesting than reading random buggy code..

Anyway Raymond Chen often talks about old stuff like that, but I'd like some talk around the issues in .NET :>

So, only MS-related design flaws, brilliant ideas, mistakes, etc are interesting, huh? Raymond only talks about Win32 issues, really.

Spot the Bug is focused on code since code is where bugs live and code is composed of explicit design (implementation details, lines of code) as well as implicit design (non-code design, like accepting a string that you process without security checks).

EDIT: I should mention that the cool thing about focusing in on code samples is that since the fragments are taken out of context and contain general programming mistakes and sometimes exceptional ones, we move away from platform dependency and closer to just pure code and algorithm design.

Charles

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

I think it should be a thought exercise. No compilers allowed. Using collective smarts kind of defeat the point.

Loadsgood
What is your answer?

I can't wait for a Python spot the bug. Since I've stopped doing Firefox code (RTF, XML etc.) I've jumped back on to the Python ship. I haven't started re-learning the code yet, so a spot the bug could teach me some new Python skills.

I guess that can be another reason to do spot the bug, to help others learn code. Not just to "spot the bug" emailing it is the best way possible, but better yet force us to use the emailing protocol of Channel9. That way people must join to enter their bugs. I like it, don't take it away nor stay within Microsoft code bounds Smiley that way we can be a multiculturalist society with a broad view, rather than a monoculturalist society with tunnel vision.

The above was IMO,
Loadsgood.

Charles
Welcome Change

In order to participate in spot the bug, you have to be a member since only members can send email to us (this is because you have to use the email form which only signed in Niners can run).

EDIT: Speaking of which, I need to implement some better UE for this case. So, rather than throw a ForumException (or lead the execution to an inevitable exception), if you're not logged in, than you shouldn't see the email icon and if you go directly to the page, you'll see a friendly message, not throw an exeception on the server... Do you agree, c9 test champions?

Charles

Loadsgood
What is your answer?

Charles wrote:
In order to participate in spot the bug, you have to be a member since only members can send email to us (this is because you have to use the email form which only signed in Niners can run).

EDIT: Speaking of which, I need to implement some better UE for this case. So, rather than throw a ForumException (or lead the execution to an inevitable exception), if you're not logged in, than you shouldn't see the email icon and if you go directly to the page, you'll see a friendly message, not throw an exeception on the server... Do you agree, c9 test champions?

Charles

I certainly agree (if I qualify as a C9 test champion) much better to give the server a happier time than to let anonymous user chuck exceptions on the server. A better world for everybody.

Bettering Channel9, one step at a time,
Loadsgood.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Shaded wrote:
Perls Eval function alone I think could land it a place in history for genetic algorithms.

Frankly, I don't see what Eval has to do with genetic algorithms. Perhaps you could elaborate?

AndyC

Personally I like the sound of the format. I haven't submitted anything yet because my C++ is too rusty and Perl makes my brain ache.

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

If the thread on the home page is a locked thread, can you hide the "be the first to reply" link?

Charles
Welcome Change

AndyC wrote:
Personally I like the sound of the format. I haven't submitted anything yet because my C++ is too rusty and Perl makes my brain ache.

We'll cover Javascript and VBscript too for all you web devs out there.

Charles
Welcome Change

Maurits wrote:
If the thread on the home page is a locked thread, can you hide the "be the first to reply" link?

Yes. Yes I can. That would be a good idea.

Jaz
From the depths of Wales I come

don't like my idea charles ;-(