Re: why is it acceptable to be this... lazy?

From:

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:26:27 GMT

Message-ID:

<DR5ri.53644$5j1.43818@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net>

Lew wrote:

Bent C Dalager wrote:

In article <4HVqi.2945$id4.506@trndny05>,
Karl Uppiano <karl.uppiano@verizon.net> wrote:

Still, my vote for all-time brain-dead code goes like this:

if( a > b ) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}

This can easily arise from a desire to set breakpoints in one of the
cases without having to mess around with conditional breakpoints (if
the debugger even supports that).

Not as clean as:

boolean forBreakpoint = (a > b);
return forBreakpoint;

That doesn't let you break only on true (or only on false).

And if their debugger doesn't support conditional breakpoints, they
can switch to either Eclipse or NetBeans for the right price.

That's true only if you meaure cost solely by initial cash outlay. Even if
Eclipse or NetBreans will eventually be as productive as their current
debugger, there's the learning curve to consider.

And then there's the fact that conditional breakpoints can be annoyingly
slow. .If I want to break only on false, and false occurs once every 10,000
times through the code, it can take much longer for the debugger to get
control 10,000 times, evaluating my expression each time, and relinquishing
control back 9,999 times, than for the debugger to get control only once.