2008-09-13

Working out some kinks

I've been a student of Lisp(s) for roughly five years now. Unfortunately, sometimes, pretty simple bugs show up and bite me. I'm a bit embarrassed to say this but... I haven't written anything about MPS for a while because I've had a problem with the proof-of-concept code. Or, so I thought. It turned out that the agenda function used mapcan instead of mapcar. Funny (well...) thing is that since I thought it used mapcar it took me quite a while to find it.

3 kommentarer:

woolfel sa...

that's pretty funny. I make mistakes like that more often than I care to admit :)

Johan Lindberg sa...

Yeah, I know what you mean ;-) it's such a rookie mistake to make but... that's what it was.

Have you read Don't go dark? It changed the way I look at my coding.

woolfel sa...

that blog makes good points. I've always tried to maintain an open attitude towards code. I have no shame and don't feel like I need to hide my mistakes or errors. It's probably naive, but my thought is this. If I honestly and bluntly share all my mistakes, maybe others can learn from them and see the progression. Rather than re-invent software, someone can look at the history and see why a particular problem is so hard to solve elegantly.

I've had people tell me I need to "act more professional" and not point out my mistakes, but I generally disagree with that. Every body is human and makes mistakes, so hiding mistakes just doesn't make sense to me. It can also lead to the "hero" complex, which I find counter productive towards growth.

I'm always happy to see people admit mistakes, cuz it reminds everyone we are all human :)