low-level programming geekiness

[cjsmith]

I don't talk about work details much, 'cause either they're so minor they're meaningless, or they're something my company wants to talk about before I talk about it. But every so often there's a tidbit I can share for my geeky friends.

You know you're a real Embedded Systems Programmer when...

...you find and fix a bug that involves changing this code

var--;

to this:

disable_interrupts();
var--;
reenable_interrupts();

Extra bonus geek points if it doesn't happen reliably, doesn't happen in the debugger, and/or takes a long time to reproduce. More extra bonus geek points for not having been the one to put that bug in there in the first place.

That was late last week, and I was pretty proud of it, actually.

Comments

[simplykimberly.livejournal.com]

I'm giving a whole talk with that as the punchline in October ;)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ummmm... I'm curious, but do I really want to know? ;-)

[simplykimberly.livejournal.com]

lol, it's not something scary ... well, except for the fact that lots of programmers end up doing multi-threading without really understanding it - that's scary!

http://www.softwaresummit.com/2005/speakers/jennery_kimberly.htm (http://www.softwaresummit.com/2005/speakers/jennery_kimberly.htm)

But really, that's one of my punchlines - that designing concurrency into a program/system is a whole lot better than trying to retrofit it into an existing one!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

well, except for the fact that lots of programmers end up doing multi-threading without really understanding it - that's scary!

Amen! It's easy to say "create new thread" but a lot harder to make sure you as a programmer have upheld your half of the bargain.

And yeah, retrofitting it is time-consuming and error-prone. This is obvious to the most casual observer, even the folks in management (that last was said with a smile). Yet we still wind up doing it!