The Golden Rule of Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#11

Post by 3amOpsGuy » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 2:30 PM UTC

I'm not a C# coder but I understood it was possible to have non-nullable types?

Keep meaning to try C# for a project sometime. I understand it to be a more expressive, programmer friendly Java.

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#12

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 2:32 PM UTC

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #6

shuma wrote: post #4

never knew that the golden rule was a database error.

For me, it's more of a "general rule" than a "golden rule".

[deleted]

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#13

Post by pbosko » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 2:37 PM UTC

jconnop wrote: post #7

Welp. That's an interesting golden error. Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vyvuBLO...

"If database connection can be null, it will be null."

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#14

Post by yen223 » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 2:38 PM UTC

ciupicri wrote: post #2

Is Error establishing a database connection the golden rule of programming? :-)

It is the exception that proves the rule!

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#15

Post by PuercoPop » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 4:23 PM UTC

Isn't it just an specific formulation of Murphy's Law? If something can go wrong it will. And that is not just the golden rule of programming, it's the golden rule of Life!

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#16

Post by bunderbunder » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 12:00 AM UTC

damncabbage wrote: post #10

"If it can be null, it will be null" So explicitly define what is allowed to ever be "null": http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/null-pointers-vs-none-vs-m...

Would that we could all just up and switch programming languages at the drop of a hat like that.

Explicitly defining what is ever allowed to be 'null' is a great habit that serves me extremely well during evenings and weekends. But it's completely useless to me, by virtue of being impossible, between 9am and 5pm.

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#17

Post by bunderbunder » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 12:05 AM UTC

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #11

I'm not a C# coder but I understood it was possible to have non-nullable types? Keep meaning to try C# for a project sometime. I understand it to be a more expressive, programmer friendly Java.

Value types are non-nullable. But they're also stack-allocated* and passed by value, so they're really only appropriate in certain cases. You can't use them as general-purpose non-nullable objects.

*In practice, though technically that bit's an implementation detail of Microsoft's run-time and not part of the language spec.

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#18

Post by spo81rty » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

Sorry, MySQL crashed :-(

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#19

Post by spo81rty » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 12:21 AM UTC

ciupicri wrote: post #2

Is Error establishing a database connection the golden rule of programming? :-)

Sorry, MySQL and word press couldn't take the traffic I guess :-(

Re: The Golden Rule of Programming

#20

Post by spo81rty » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #11

I'm not a C# coder but I understood it was possible to have non-nullable types? Keep meaning to try C# for a project sometime. I understand it to be a more expressive, programmer friendly Java.

For some data types. Strings and objects can always be nullable.