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Subject: Re: Design choices in Crafty

Author: Ricardo Gibert

Date: 06:59:19 06/25/04

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On June 24, 2004 at 20:29:34, Dieter Buerssner wrote:

>On June 24, 2004 at 07:50:33, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>
>>OK, in general I agree with Knuth: premature optimization is the root of all
>>evil.
>
>This is often attributed to Knuth. I think it is originally by Hoare (the one,
>who invented quicksort).
>
>
>Dieter.
>
>"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the
>first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will
>you ever debug it?" -- Brian Kernighan

I remember hearing this last one for the first time a couple of years ago. At
first I thought it was "clever", but then I realized it was omitting an
important element: Time. With enough time, you can debug anything. In the worst
case, debugging will require complete rewrite. In this way, the question posed
is quite answerable, so I no longer find it "clever." Instead, I find it
"half-baked." Surely there must be a better way to express the idea it attempts
to convey.



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