On Fri, 2008-09-12 at 16:51 -0400, Eric Gorr wrote: > On Sep 12, 2008, at 4:27 PM, Robert Cummings wrote: > > > On Fri, 2008-09-12 at 16:11 -0400, Eric Gorr wrote: > >> On Sep 12, 2008, at 3:44 PM, Robert Cummings wrote: > >>> > >>> I don't see how that in any way makes an argument for or against. > >>> Once > >>> still must spend client's money wasting time on code that has > >>> questionable merit. Yes, some debugging code is a great boon in any > >>> application, but littered everywhere to fulfill someone's subjective > >>> philosophical ideal when sometimes it's just plain unnecessary... > >>> wasteful IMHO. > >> > >> As far as I know, no one has yet come up with a proof showing when > >> debugging code is and/or is not necessary. > >> > >> The simple fact is that bugs can popup anywhere and spending a > >> client's time and money by spending a few minutes writing all of the > >> simple test cases throughout an application can be well worth it as > >> it > >> can save far more of the client's time and money by not wasting it on > >> tracking down bugs that could have been easily caught. > > > > It is impractical to include debugging code for every conditional in a > > program. > > I have yet to see any evidence that it is impractical, especially > after one has gotten into the habit. After all, for switch statements, > adding in a default case takes mere seconds. Yes but if you do for case, you SHOULD do for if/else if/else which is an analagous approach. > Now, for a large project that has already been written, it may be > impractical but only because it is unlikely anyone will be willing to > spend the time or money to go back and put the stuff back in... If they don't want to spend the money after the fact, they probably wouldn't want to spend the money before the fact. > > Doubly impractical to do so in PHP unless you have some way to > > prevent said debugging code from running in production. > > It isn't hard to prevent a code path from running in a production > environment and allowing it to run in a development environment. Just > one example, in PHP, would be globally defining something like > PRODUCTION and then testing to see if it has a value of 1 or 0 and > then writing an if statement to test the value before executing some > code. There you go... you just ran a useless branch. Replacing one code path with another is hardly an optimial solution. What if your case statement is in a tight loop that runs a million times? > Of course, there may be other clever solutions that aren't > popping into my head at the moment. I'm sure you could come up with > something better. I already did... don't add useless debugging code when the code is simple, easily understand, and highly unlikely to contain a bug. > Furthermore, the whole point of these test cases is for those parts of > the code which are never supposed to be executed to begin with, so > that alone will aid in preventing said debugging code from executing > in production...and if said debugging code does run in production, > would that be such a bad thing (assuming it doesn't interfere with the > user)? After all, because it (like the default switch case) was > executed, it immediately implies there was a problem... If they're never supposed ot be executed then why are you adding extra code? That sounds like a need for better logic skills, not a need for debugging code. > > Maybe you're > > confusing debugging code with unit tests. As I said earlier, it is far > > more practical to do so for complex conditions where a reader might > > easily get lost. Rather useless for simplistic cases. > > Until one finds it has saved hours because a problem was caught, I can > understand why some would think that it is rather useless. I've spent hours on bugs before, they were never once related to not having put debugging fluff into a simple set of case statements. They were almost always related to lack of comments in a complex or hackish chunk of code. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
