Random Coding

[robinbloke]

I have just created my finest program ever.
It is called "crash".
It is a single dialog with a big button marked "Crash" which makes itself crash.
It is also very useful.

Comments

[civi.livejournal.com]

Iwish I had audio canals in my retina.
That would rock!

[gandalf-t-black.livejournal.com]

Microsoft did that years ago. Only difference was that their button was marked "Start"

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Your eyeballs could be dolby 5.1!

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Hehe :) Oh so true.

[civi.livejournal.com]

3D vision with surround sound!

[rirekon.livejournal.com]

I made one of those once and distributed it to all my friends, it said "PORN" though...

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Oh the subtlety of humour... ;)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

And a scratch and sniff nose as an optional extra!

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

does it set off claxans and red flashing lights?

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Sadly not, given that around here people might think the ink plant has caught fire...

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

Surely every programmer writes this at least once in their career? I know I have. Intentionally, I mean. Clearly programmers write it unintentionally all the time.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Not before now; mind you that does open a realm of curiosity for me asto how programmers would force a crash...

[zotz]

Didn't the BBC Micro have the "on error crash" statement?

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

It needs a 'user confirm' dialogue:

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

There was definately an "On error" command, but my memory doesn't stretch far enough back to remember if there was a "crash" command too...

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Heh heh. That made me grin.

The endless "Are you sure" "Are you really sure" "Do you really want to go through with this" "Come on think what you could be doing instead." "Now look, can't we just talk this over?" "This is all just a personal attack on me you know." etc etc buttons do get very annoying at times.

[gerald_duck]

I wrote one of those a couple of weeks back to test error handling in our product. It's so impeccably reliable I can't get an error any other way, oh yes.

Apparently, many years ago, various systems in MIT had a documented utility called "crash" that would, if run by any user, bring down the entire system. This took all the fun out of trying to hack the system, so nobody bothered. Alas, hacker mentalities aren't what they used to be.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

I've not heard of that utility before, interesting counter-hacker philosphy!

[mattp.livejournal.com]

Stress testing (e.g. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/crashme) or just bored?

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Just working out what a customer would need to do in order to return us a decent level of info from an XP box if our system crashes, since it has changed from NT.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

You want to be careful - the creators of Microsoft Word will be after you for intellectual property theft.