| Test::Unit makes me write better C code |
[Mar. 18th, 2005|12:01 pm] |
Today, once again, Nathaniel Talbott's Test::Unit helped me eliminate some bad C code in a Ruby extension that I'm writing. You see, Test::Unit has a good habit of causing the interpreter to segfault/core-dump where seemingly straightforward sample programs work without incident.
Why is this good? Because 99% of the time it means you've got some bad C code somewhere. I've learned that this *usually* means that you've got a memory leak buried somewhere in your C code. Or you're using a pointer to some data structure incorrectly in some fashion. I don't mean the sorts of things that are going to get picked up by -Wall, either.
I can't remember why Test::Unit (inadvertently) finds these bugs. Nathaniel told me once and I've forgotten (again). But, whatever. It works and I'm thankful. :)
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| I don't like Linux |
[Mar. 18th, 2005|07:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cynical | ] |
There. I've said it. I don't like it. I don't like it as a desktop OS. It's clunky and ugly and most of my toys don't work, even after patches. It's sluggish and occasionally I get brief periods of no responsiveness. Sometimes I have broadband. Sometimes it just stops working. I have no sound, despite installing the patches and following the directions as best I can. This happens with two different distros - Mandrake 9 and Suse 8, btw.
Blech. Yuck. Phooey.
Even when I had a smoother version of Linux running on my old dual Pentium II box, I still never liked it very much. It just never gave me warm fuzzies. Especially not compared to, say, BeOS. Ah, now there was a great desktop OS. But I digress.
What about as a server? Frankly, I'd pick FreeBSD over Linux as a server. Faster filesystem. More secure. If I'm willing to shell out the bucks then I go with Solaris, not Linux. I still need to try Solaris 10, btw. I've heard good things about it.
There was a time when I would have been willing to put up with this, and tinkered around for hours and hours to get the thing working the way I wanted it to. Not any more. I'm too old and tired. I just want stuff to work. I have better things to do than screw around with config files on my time off.
I'll keep Linux around, though, for compatability issues that may pop up. And no, I don't feel like shelling out $99 for Suse 9.3 professional, so get off my back.
PS - I've disabled comments because I've already heard it. |
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