Ten points for Gryffindor!

[andrewducker]

And also for anyone who can tell me what stupid mistake was made in this
code:

if (!OpalControlsHelper.ProgrammaticChangeOccurring)
      this.dummySchemeCombo.Text = "No";
      this.dataHeldCombo.Text="No";

I'm so tempted to start coding in Python, where you can't make this kind of mistake.

Oh, and as a note - I didn't make this mistake, I just spent 2 hours tracking it down.  My current mistakes mostly seem to revolve around unthought of results of multiple sections of event-driven code interacting in unforseen ways.

Comments

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Spaces around the "=" - or not in the second line?

[andrewducker]

Nope - C# doesn't care about whitespace at all.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Don't switch languages - switch IDEs. If I type "if (something)" without a nice { or corresponding inline statement, I get a lovely wavy red line and little triangle in the line numbers telling me I've forgotten it. I love XCode, it is a many-trick pony....

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I'm only guessing, I'm not familiar with the language but I reckon the first "no" is conditional and the second will happen all the time. It looks like missing out the enclosing {} is allowed but it needs to be there this time to tell the programme which bits of the following code it encompasses. Do I win?

[andrewducker]

Yup. I must have looked through the code about 17 times before realising that the indentation was there, but the brackets weren't.

Ten points for you!

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! And what do points make?

[andrewducker]

Are you implying something about the size of my chin?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I imagine he's using VS.NET which does that.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Arrggh! I feel stupid now! And the comment about Python totally gives it away!

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

In Code Complete, Cooper has a whole section about braces and indenting where he yells about this type of error.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

No braces?

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Oops, beaten to it :-)

[figg.livejournal.com]

You might want to look at Boo. (Boo's Features (http://boo.codehaus.org/Language+Features), Boo on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo_programming_language)). It has a python like syntax, and runs on the CLI/.NET.

Haskell uses semantic whitespace too.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Well, there's IronPython, so you don't need to leave .NET.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Which has since moved here as a MS sponsored project.

[darkoshi]

Missing brackets. But at least it is indented nice. How does Python handle that?

[andrewducker]

Python treats whitespace as the same as bracketing in C. If you indented it, then it's because you wanted it to be included in the loop/if/whatever.

[andrewducker]

IronPython would be tempting, but starting to use a new coding language at work without clearing it with about 70 people would be...tricky.

[andrewducker]

It does? 2003 doesn't automatically stick in brackets- does 2005?

[andrewducker]

Code Complete is on my to-read list. I take it it's well worth it?

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

It's good, almost great. There's a lot of picky stuff that I question, and it's like reading a reference work from forward to back. I'd suggest Pragmatic Programmer -- it has the same "feel" and purpose, but takes a broader approach to good coding and is a better read, IMHO.

And darn it, it's McConnell, not Cooper. I've had Asylum on the brain lately.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

No it doesn't - but didn't the person above say that you got a wavy line without brackets or inline code?

Personally VS.NET is the best IDE I've ever used. There is a guy at work who uses Eclipse, but that's because it's the the best IDE for Action Script (which is what he mainly does).

Whatever criticism people have of Microsoft they make good IDEs (and mice although I believe someone else makes their mice).

[andrewducker]

Aah, sorry, got confused.

I didn't get a wavy line with the code I posted - should I have?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

No, it's perfectly valid if a little misleading ;-)

[andrewducker]

Surely I have an inline statement - it's the next one? Or am I misunderstanding?

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Inline ifs are meant for "small" if statements, although they're rather pointless - instead of "if (something) { do something } else {do something else}" over many lines, you have "something ? do this : do that", mainly used as part of an express (i.e. a = flag ? a : b;), but also if you've got small things to do.

I personally hate them to death as they're confusing, and lead to situations such as above, but, er, different. Ahh welL!

[andrewducker]

Aaaah. I first heard of those as immediate ifs. And yeah, I don't tend to use them, as they're harder to read.

I think I'd like to be able to turn on a compiler warning that insisted on having {} after any if statement.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's very useful. Can you get what you're using to do it?

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

oh yeah Pragmatic Programmer is ace. Reminds me, I lost my copy YEARS ago...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

YICK!!! Hideous. primitive. I HATE languages that have any sort of meaning or restriction for whitespace....

[andrewducker]

Not easily. That kind of thing is picked up by the compiler and the IDE just parses the compiler output to produce warnings/errors.

I could theoretically write an extension to do it, but I'm not sure I care _that_ much at the moment.

[andrewducker]

Why primitive? It's a modern language that didn't _have_ to have that feature - they put it in because indenting properly ought to be best practice, and using it properly removes the need for braces, and makes the kind of mistake I found above impossible to make.