When tracking down a compilation problem or even while refactoring code; I find it extremely useful to selectively disable blocks of code. Now I could just wrap the offending section in a ‘#if 0’ and change the 0 to a 1 as needed. Unfortunately not many IDE’s colour these sections correctly, and those that do sometimes get it wrong. Instead I prefer the good old block comment method:

some code
/*
commented code
// */
more code 

Notice how the line with the end of the block comment ‘*/’ has been preceded with a line comment ‘//’? This way you can comment out the start of the block comment with a single slash and not get an error from the unmatched end:

some code
//*
no longer commented code
// */
more code

I realise this is a fairly obvious “trick”, but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else.

So the latest Ask Slashdot was concerned with writing ultra stable software in C++. Of course you have the usual anti-C++ crowd immediately crawl out of the wood work but there was one post that was interesting… well ok not the post itself but the link they referred to was: They Write the Right Stuff.

In brief the article refers to the work of the “on-board shuttle group” and their software defect rate. I’ve had this very article mentioned to me several times before by a work colleague and only now have I actually gotten around to reading it. The most interesting part of the article was not what it said but what it didn’t. Notice at no stage was the programming language they used mentioned. Why? Because it is not relevant. In essence the trick to achieving 99.9% reliability is process control.

Infact I’m confident that the “on-board shuttle group” will pass the The Joel Spolsky test.