What feels nice is ...

**EternalOptimist** · 30 November 2009, 17:38

Originally posted by HairyArsedBloke View Post

... finding out that the bug that has been driving me potty for a day and a half isn’t me being stupid, but a bug in an external library. It being open source, I could look deep into it and find out what was wrong and even managed figure out a fix, send it to the author and get it a) acknowledged as a bug, b) have my fix accepted.

I managed to get lucky this time, but there is no way I could do this programming lark for a living anymore.

yay , well done mate

**Netraider** · 30 November 2009, 19:52

I must admit that I was very cautious opening this thread, taking into account the OPs reputation

Well done

**HairyArsedBloke** · 30 November 2009, 19:57

Originally posted by Netraider View Post

I must admit that I was very cautious opening this thread, taking into account the OPs reputation

Well done

Wot you mean?

**RichardCranium** · 30 November 2009, 20:51

Interesting avatar. Is that you haunting AlreadyPacked in Egypt?

I shall never forget a company Xmas piss-up in the 1980s when one of the most serious hard drinkers turn up 2 hours late and burst into the restaurant and yelled:
"It was a f**king bug in the ME29 COBOL compiler

"

(Yes, he did say :banana: - I remember it well.)

The whole company cheered him and it was a special night after that.

It is a sign of the true professional: methodical, confident, wise - that can find bugs in compilers, external libraries and operating systems.

Well done, HAB. You've still got it - and not many ever had it to start with.

**HairyArsedBloke** · 30 November 2009, 20:57

Originally posted by RichardCranium View Post

Interesting avatar. Is that you haunting AlreadyPacked in Egypt?

Nah, it's a beach where I was and should be living right now (but not

).

**conned tractor** · 30 November 2009, 21:51

Had similar during the first week of my last contract. It got so bad and was making me look like a right tw@ that I thought Jeremy ******* beadle was going to jump out at some point. Turned out to be the compiler and I made a huge point of letting them know.

**OwlHoot** · 1 December 2009, 00:19

Originally posted by RichardCranium View Post

Interesting avatar. Is that you haunting AlreadyPacked in Egypt?...

We're supposed to be using Christmas avatars now. So HAB is subtly hinting that he'll be on holiday in Bermuda or somewhere for a month over Christmas, while most of us are stuck here in the UK shivering our nuts off

**bobhope** · 1 December 2009, 08:12

Originally posted by RichardCranium View Post

It is a sign of the true professional: methodical, confident, wise - that can find bugs in compilers, external libraries and operating systems.

Well done, HAB. You've still got it - and not many ever had it to start with.

Yeah, but 99% of the time when you say "it must be a bug in the compiler," it turns out to be a bug in your code.

Apart from that one time in Visual Studio C++ with floating point number weirdness. That's a week of my life I'm not getting back.

Oh and those middleware libraries that went into infinite loops. Thank god for Java decompilers.

**threaded** · 1 December 2009, 08:55

I had a client complain about the output of some function that I was using from an open source toolkit. It was a complaint for the sake of complaining complaint, so I passed the complaint on to the writer of the function knowing they had a good sense of humour. They responded by sending a link to their page on Wolfram MathWorld and their lecture on the subject from the MIT site.

Oh, how we laughed.

What feels nice is ...