So it's a girl value. *

[geekchick]

Hauled out my copy of the Camel Book to look up something on dereferencing and tripped over this nugget of joy:

A hard reference refers not to the name of another variable (which is just a container for a value) but rather to an actual value, some internal glob of data, which we will call a "thingy", in honor of that thingy that hangs down in the back of your throat. (You may also call it a "referent", if you prefer to live a joyless existence.)

Don't you hate when you look at code you wrote a year ago and don't have the slightest idea anymore what you were doing when you did X? Not "why did I choose to do this", but "what does this even mean"? *facepalm*


* "That's the house's uvula." "So it's a girl house." (from "Monster House")

Comments

[n5red.livejournal.com]

Have you considered becoming a follower of the Pickaxe book instead of the Camel book?

[geekchick]

I've given learning Ruby some thought (and have a new web host that supports it, for when I have time and energy to try picking it up), but this particular bit of code is already in perl and needs to stay that way for now.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

funny thingy. :)

Don't you hate when you look at code you wrote a year ago and don't have the slightest idea anymore what you were doing when you did X? Not "why did I choose to do this", but "what does this even mean"? *facepalm*

yes.

the happy coder's mantra: document, document, document.

[geekchick]

The funny thing is that the code is documented in the potentially critical parts so that I'd remember what I was doing and why, I just didn't make a note on why I was using a reference in a certain spot instead of just the plain ol' array. There must be some reason I did (because it'd never have occurred to me otherwise, I'm pretty sure), but neither I nor my coworker can figure out from looking at the rest of the code now what that reason might've been. Guess I'll find out when I get to testing the changes. =)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*nod*. oh yeah, that happens to me, despite writing reams of documentation. sometimes i can go back through notebooks and retrace my train of thought because i compulsively doodle when writing code and working out a new way of doing things, but sometimes it's lost in the mists of time (or on a piece of paper not in a notebook).