The Art of Failure (2000) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Art of Failure (2000)

#11

Post by fuzzythinker » Sun, Aug 02, 2009, 2:12 AM UTC

tom_rath wrote: post #4

yread wrote: post #2

A very enjoyable read thank you. I wonder how does it look when a programmer panics or chokes

From what I've seen (and felt!) one might be facing a really nasty bug which has caused a sudden crash in a production environment which is holding up many hundreds of very angry customers. Some yelling may have occurred. You know you should sit back and reason out what the problem might be (it worked before -- what's gone wrong?) but the rookie reflex is to start coding right away and to slap something -- ANYTHING!…

It's not that simple. It usually depends on the criticality and severeness of the bug. You have to weight the quick fix (if any) against the consequence of not acting on it NOW and any guesstimates of side effects.

Re: The Art of Failure (2000)

#12

Post by screwperman » Sun, Aug 02, 2009, 5:26 AM UTC

DTrejo wrote: post #10

screwperman wrote: post #7

She was leading 4-1 and serving at 40-30, meaning that she was one point from winning the game Eh, what?

Tennis has very strange scoring. It's complicated to explain, but here goes: The first person to get 6 games wins the set.* The first person to win 4 rallies in a game wins that game.* During a game, if you have one point your score is "15," two points is "30" and three points is "40." When you get four points or win by two, then you win the game. *One must win by two.

Oh, what a debacle! Even after being such a devout tennis buff, I have confused "game" with "match". Or maybe I just can't read :(.

Re: The Art of Failure (2000)

#13

Post by DTrejo » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 11:51 PM UTC

screwperman wrote: post #12

DTrejo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tennis has very strange scoring. It's complicated to explain, but here goes: The first person to get 6 games wins the set.* The first person to win 4 rallies in a game wins that game.* During a game, if you have one point your score is "15," two points is "30" and three points is "40." When you get four points or win by two, then you win the game. *One must win by two.

Oh, what a debacle! Even after being such a devout tennis buff, I have confused "game" with "match". Or maybe I just can't read :(.

If you win 2 out of 3 of the sets then you win the match! (assuming you're playing a regular match)