Bugs in your software

I’m working on a new piece of software and had been having the normal issues with debugging. Variables that haven’t been initialized, logic that is wrong, and syntax errors. These don’t really bother me as they are pretty easy to find and fix.

Today though, I came across one that just made me mad.

I had used the same piece of code on another module, so I simply copied in the appropriate changes and thought I would be off and running. But no. It not only did not work, but had the wierdest behavior that I have ever seen.

I pored over the code, looking at every line, trying to figure out what could possibly be the problem, but I couldn’t find it. I even slept on it, thinking that I’d figure it out in the morning, but when I woke up, it was still there.

Finally I thought I’d try something, and saved all the files once more. Sure enough, one of the files had been changed, but not saved, and therefore the change I made hadn’t been reflected. That turned out to be the cause of the problem. The change had been to remove a trigger event, and that was what was causing the problem.

 

After the steam out of my ears finally subsided, I took some solace in the fact that the bug was fixed, but am still kicking myself for the stupid mistake.

Save early and save often is my new policy.