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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: terminate applications
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:54:13 -0500
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Date: 2003-07-24T14:54:13-05:00
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"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:8CITa.22321$0F4.22242@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
> I have an idea! Every once in a while, Ada programming environments should
> randomly change a character somewhere in a source file. This will force
the
> programmer to reread all the code looking for the error, making him become
> more acquainted with the program, and allowing hin to serendipitously find
> lurking bugs.

Very early PCs that we worked on tended to do that periodically. But it
wasn't very effective on forcing re-reading of Ada code, because most single
character changes cause a compile-time error (or are in comments, where they
don't matter anyway).

But the general sentiment is correct: re-reading old code often finds bugs.
That happens nearly every time I go into our compiler looking for a bug; I
often end up fixing three of four bugs before I finally find the one I was
originally looking for.

                    Randy.