(no subject)
Today was bittersweet, really.
I've spent most of the day refactoring b0rk and writing tests. There are (were?) some glaring omissions in there, mainly relating to the handling of non-32bit variables. I was aware that they were unhanded, but not that they are silently swallowed! The code that I'm looking at now dates from the inception of b0rk, and I'm fairly certain that the rest of the codebase is of higher quality, but.. damn.
I pretty much decided that it isn't worth troubleshooting the codebase on production targets while it has so many silent failure vectors, and thus started refactoring (in order to minimise the amount of copy-and-paste in there - and there's quite a lot) and, where the code is sufficiently complex, writing tests before I refactor to try to weed out subtle bugs. The flipside of this is that I've rewritten quite a lot of code, chopping out a lot of redundant and fragile bits and replacing them with easier-to-maintain code. It's kind of like cutting the dead buds off a rosebush so that healthy buds can regrow in their place.
I'm very concious that my C++ knowledge is advancing at quite a rate, which is good, but means that I'm quite critical of my work even six months ago.
I also ventured out in to the IRL, to try to find an arbor for the holesaw which I want to drill a hole in my door with, to vent the aircon through. My local BnQ didn't have any, so tomorrow, the plan is to call at BnQ warehouses and get one. Hopefully I can set up the aircon through the door, meaning that I can use the blade servers for Great Fuzzing.
Rick came over today, too, dropping off some kit. He gave me an Intel router, which has 10baseT, AUI, ISDN (lol) and sync serial, which is actually really handy, as I only had one router with sync serial, and now that I have two, it means that Kat - who really wants me to teach her some Cisco stuff - can set up a sync serial link between two devices. I have three or four low end Cisco routers - 801's and a really old 1000-series - so I'll probably set those up and let her play with them. I've also got my enormous 7000 series, but it's so much hassle to get it out of storage and find space for it that it's not really worth it (especially since it only provices two sync serial ports). Perhaps I'll have a look at an ethernet card for it, so I can set up a nice "core router goes to 4 premises router" scenario with it.
OK, right. Off to sleep now.
I've spent most of the day refactoring b0rk and writing tests. There are (were?) some glaring omissions in there, mainly relating to the handling of non-32bit variables. I was aware that they were unhanded, but not that they are silently swallowed! The code that I'm looking at now dates from the inception of b0rk, and I'm fairly certain that the rest of the codebase is of higher quality, but.. damn.
I pretty much decided that it isn't worth troubleshooting the codebase on production targets while it has so many silent failure vectors, and thus started refactoring (in order to minimise the amount of copy-and-paste in there - and there's quite a lot) and, where the code is sufficiently complex, writing tests before I refactor to try to weed out subtle bugs. The flipside of this is that I've rewritten quite a lot of code, chopping out a lot of redundant and fragile bits and replacing them with easier-to-maintain code. It's kind of like cutting the dead buds off a rosebush so that healthy buds can regrow in their place.
I'm very concious that my C++ knowledge is advancing at quite a rate, which is good, but means that I'm quite critical of my work even six months ago.
I also ventured out in to the IRL, to try to find an arbor for the holesaw which I want to drill a hole in my door with, to vent the aircon through. My local BnQ didn't have any, so tomorrow, the plan is to call at BnQ warehouses and get one. Hopefully I can set up the aircon through the door, meaning that I can use the blade servers for Great Fuzzing.
Rick came over today, too, dropping off some kit. He gave me an Intel router, which has 10baseT, AUI, ISDN (lol) and sync serial, which is actually really handy, as I only had one router with sync serial, and now that I have two, it means that Kat - who really wants me to teach her some Cisco stuff - can set up a sync serial link between two devices. I have three or four low end Cisco routers - 801's and a really old 1000-series - so I'll probably set those up and let her play with them. I've also got my enormous 7000 series, but it's so much hassle to get it out of storage and find space for it that it's not really worth it (especially since it only provices two sync serial ports). Perhaps I'll have a look at an ethernet card for it, so I can set up a nice "core router goes to 4 premises router" scenario with it.
OK, right. Off to sleep now.