Upper Lamarck (Feb 03 2009)

So then. We had our weekly outage today. We knew it would be a long one - the result table is bloated for various reasons so it took forever to compress. This may help get past this period of "indigestion" I mentioned in the previous thread, but there's no sign of it getting much better any time soon. Expect continuing network pain. Plus Bob is resync'ing the mysql replica, so that'll be behind a bit in the near term.

Quite often we recompile all the back-end servers with code thoroughly tested in beta and switch in these new versions in the public project during the outage. We did so today, and the splitters and assimilators all freaked out upon starting up this afternoon with library linking errors. What a hassle. It seems like our servers are slowly getting more and more out of sync, given some are 32-bit, some are 64-bit, some are running this rev of the OS, some are running that rev, some have this package installed, some don't, etc. and this is apparently becoming a problem. Like we have time to clean this all up.

<obnoxious rant>
I was having an offline discussion with a friend who insists that C++ is a vast improvement on C, and that C programmers who complain about C++'s major failings are living in the past or "just don't understand." I wouldn't mind the debate except C++ afficianados usually adopt a smug, condescending tone regarding C programmers that reminds me of republicans describing democrats. In any case there was a programming mystery today that ate up a man-hour of my and Jeff's time. If the object in question was just a struct it would have been painfully obvious. Instead the problem was obscured in vague assignment operator behavior. Does anybody have an actual, simple example of C++ code that is (a) easier to debug than analogous C code, (b) required less manpower to generate, and (c) will be forever useful and understood? I'm willing to be convinced, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it's just a different (and not necessarily better) kind of brain that loves C++, but I tend to think it stemmed from the evil part of our monkey mind that turns a blind eye toward unnecessary complication for everybody in the hope that things may be easier for ourself later on. Or the other evil part of our monkey mind that foists contorted methodology on others as some sort of sick competition (which may be fun but is hardly productive). K&R = 200 pages. Stroustrup = 1000 pages. Is C++ really 500% better that it requires 500% the pages to describe? Nope. Case closed.
</obnoxious rant>

- Matt
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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

I have written a lot of C and even more C++. The point of C++ is that operations should be embedded in the class. This makes one place to fix rather than several.

Yes, there is C++ code that is permanently useful. However, the most useful permanent C++ isn't that simple to code, but it is simple to use - the std template library.

I have written a large amount of C++ that took less time than the equivalent C code would have.

As for C#, it is a royal pain to write a large program in C# - I have written a fair amount in C# as well. It is also nearly impossible, if not completely impossible, to do some things that are trivial in either C or C++ (just try to write your own container, or do hardware access, or binary file read/write).
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BOINC WIKI

... servers are slowly getting more and more out of sync, given some are 32-bit, some are 64-bit, some are running this rev of the OS, some are running that rev, some have this package installed, some don't, etc. and this is apparently becoming a problem. Like we have time to clean this all up.

... a friend who insists that C++ is a vast improvement on C... a programming mystery... the problem was obscured in vague assignment operator behavior... foists contorted methodology...

I have seen both atrociously written C and atrociously written C++. One example in C was a case where two values (X and Y) were passed down a call stack as arguments the 5th call in the stack they were passed in the order Y and X. In the tenth level they stopped being passed without being used. In the 20th call in the stack, X and Y were magically used out of a pair of globals -- that were set in the function where they were called in the order Y and X. Because of entanglement with other places, this took about a week to fix.

One example of atrocious C++ was a case where X++ and ++X incremented different variables. The quthor of that code used so many obscure tricks that we decided it would be easier to start over.

On the + side of C++, se had a case where an entire corner of the program had to be redesigned, but replacing the code for that corner was just replacing one class herarchy, and did not take very long considering how much was redesigned.

Encapsulation really does pay if you do it right.
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BOINC WIKI

Good to see data from the new 05Jan09 recordings filtering through from the splitters.

Even better, A2010 seems to have replaced A2130 in the observing schedules thru March 12. That should suit everyone - there won't be the massive overload of VHAR 'shorties' for the servers to cope with, and there won't be a massive overload of VLAR to clog up the CUDA clients.

Encapsulation really does pay if you do it right.

I personally feel both parties are dead and useless and should disband and reform as several others, FWIW.