The effort devoted to minor bugs

[jack]

*sigh* There were other more funadmental problems, but instrumental in the bug was my muddling the precedence of "&" and "==". Obviously, we all make these mistakes sometimes. And I've got a lot better at avoiding minor mistakes as I've taken a more professional approach to programming.

But does everyone else (who programs) still find such typos happening?

For that matter, surely there is room for improvement in editors. Most people I know seem to use emacs, UltraEdit at work, vi if they're contrary, or Visual Studio if that's what they're using. But without going into details of which I've thought a lot, there seems a lot more that could be done to make minor errors, time spent comprehending code, etc, which eats up lots of productivity better? Surely it's the most obvious project for any programmer to want to work on?

Comments

[simont]

Perhaps those programmers who feel a serious need for extra help from the editor aren't productive enough to write the code to do it, whereas those who are productive enough don't need it in the first place :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. It's true to some extent. Particularly, they might well think so: I think it's somewhat common for good programmers to dislike such helpful things[1], so they don't think they need it. Even if it would help them get even better.

Of course, like so many things, it's probably valuble to learn the hard way first...

[1] Possible reasons: they've been exposed to many bad systems; they feel it's patronising; they're good at working without it, which skills become less important with it.