Saturday, February 13, 2010

Billions and billions

Lambda the Ultimate brings me A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World. These fellows have a wicked dry sense of humor. Typically:

We thought this approach was bulletproof. Unfortunately, as the astute reader has noted, it requires a command prompt. Soon after implementing it we went to a large company, so large it had a hyperspecialized build engineer, who engaged in the following dialogue:

"How do I run your tool?"

"Oh, it's easy. Just type 'cov-build' before your build command."

"Build command? I just push this [GUI] button..."

Hilarity ensues. Unfortunately the article generated only one comment:

I hugely enjoyed this article. I can't think when I last read an article that made so many important points. Thanks for not sugar-coating the description of real-world problems and real solutions. And thanks for not drowning those points in jargon.

   — Bjarne Stroustrup, January 29, 2010

Happy President's Day.

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