Hard at Work or Hardly Working?

You might think you know the answer to that question, but I'll wager you don't. I'm presently waiting for my system to rebuild in release settings so that I can go test a few things I have tweaked in the past couple hours. It has been a rather difficult work week--one eleven-hour day and a nine-and-a-half hour day the next. Today has been moderately fast and easy to deal with, though I have begun to realize exactly how poorly the system is engineered.

When I teach my students their first few baby steps in Object-Oriented Programming, I describe the differences between accessor and mutator methods. For the uninitiated, an accessor method essentially acts like a question: "Hey Object O, tell me your value for Property P." A mutator method acts like a demand: "Hey Object O, set your Property P to Q." These types of methods are sometimes referred to as "getters" and "setters." In any case, one of the big no-nos is to mix the two. You guessed it--some moron here mixed the two. So every time I asked Object O for the value of Property P, Property P changed to Q.

I found this out yesterday, and it simply struck me as bad programming. Today, it bit me in the butt. Fortunately, a patient co-worker was able to suggest some workarounds that helped fix the problem. (Can you believe they engineered software with the CONVENTION that the getters would act like setters?!?) What was supposed to be a quick fix turned into four more hours of hair-pulling. But I think it's done, now, and I just have to rebuild some components and go.


Other than that, life is fairly boring. I have more or less finished Moretti's Gourmet Creations website (http://www.salvatoremoretti.com) and made some serious headway in Crown of Swords. Between bill-paying, sleep, buying tickets to come home for Christmas, and other such goodies, I haven't had much time for else.

And now it's time to get this show on the road. So until later, I remain most devotedly yours,

e