ebay - cardamatic

[Tom Jennings]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Eric Smith wrote:

> Obviously now that compiling most programs is basically "free",
> desk-checking and patching have become lost arts.

Also, no one debugs from memory dumps anymore -- UGH! What
masochism that is! Only did it once.

Desk-checking is still good practice (maybe to a lesser degree of
detail though since we do have debuggers) and patching at the
source level is of course common (for non-fascist OSs that let you
have source (if you want it (I often dont))).

One aspect of "desk checking" is an obscure, little-known tool in
design known as "planning ahead". From the looks of most crap-ass
software it appears that people think of programs as collections
of feetches (rhymes with...).