Re: [tlug] using rusage

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2008-06-22 09:48 +0900 (Sun), Josh Glover wrote:

> 2008/6/22 Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>:
> 
> > But then again, if you're in a "better safe than sorry" mode....
>
> Shouldn't this be the default position of systems programmers?

Well, it's a trade-off, as usual. Being better safe than sorry in C
usually means adding more code, sometimes much more, and the complexity
that it adds to the system will certainly introduce its own problems. So
are those problems easier to deal with than the other issues? It depends
on the specifics of your program.

I encounter a lot of projects where the code is getting close to
"untouchable"--it's a huge amount of work to make even fairly trivial
changes. The most common reason for this, besides of course the lack of
automated tests, is that no effort was made to reduce the code to the
smallest possible amount that could still do the work, and so you have
to deal with thousands of lines when making a change where you should
instead have to deal with a few hundred.

For any software you're modifying, you essentially pay a maintenance
charge on every single line of code, every month.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974   
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com