Thread: What's the Biggest Program You have ever Written?

Originally Posted by axon

I think he was asking a legitimate question and got a sarcastic answer....just look at the sig. Not all beginner questions need an over the top bashing reply.

I don't know if he was born a good programmer , but i do know that im a regular guy trying to learn new stuff every day .

Anyways, Brain Cell, programs with a lot of code are very rarely one monolithic file - they are broken into small pieces that work well together (ideally). When I write any program (no matter how small or big) I compile, run, and debug it periodically to check my logic (Its much easier to find a bug in 25 lines of code than 500 ). It is good to acquire this habit early in your programming career as it will be very helpful later on.

Well i've been programming in C for a while but i've never had to write big programmer thats why im asking.

Thanks for sharing that axon

>>if HE was

she

well she

and i always thought Prelude was a guy...

>I don't know if he was born a good programmer
I was born a really really REALLY bad programmer. My programs were ugly incarnate. Fortunately, I recovered, though I believe I ended up overcompensating and moving to the other extreme.

If I 'program' 10,000 different people's TiVOs to record something, and each 'programming session' would generate the equivalent of a line of code, does that mean I've written a single 10k line program?

Otherwise I'm writing a physics modeling program that is several K long

>So your programs are unbelievably sexy now?
I write my programs with concentrated sexy, 180 proof.

how do you guys write programs with 1k of lines? do you test\debug it in small chunks (seperate programs) or go through the code all over again to fix your errors?

You can try reading books like Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with applications by Gary Booch. A free UML tool can be found at http://www.htc.honeywell.com/dome/ Once I write what the program is supposed to do, the scenarios, I try to write diagrams of design of the program from most general subsystem relations to class methods. Then I'll write about 500 lines(about 4 related classes) and then write tests. ( You might want to try writing the tests before writing the classes might be better. But at least have a general idea of how you want to test the class at design time--you don't get stuck with untestable classes ). You should be able to easily write programs with more 15K lines of code. More than that, you'll want to try a more formal method.

Originally Posted by gcn_zelda

Don't worry about it. I always thought Govtcheez was a girl.

Totally understandable mistake.

Brain Cell,
A big thing to keep in mind when dealing with large programs is that the particular details of a unit (say a single class) can wait to be put off for a while. What you really need to get nailed down is how it will interact with other parts of the code (essentially, the interface, but there is a bit more to it than that). The clearer the line of communication and the less communication there is amongst disjoint parts, the easier your life will be. The details of particular functions/algorithms are just that, details.

Bah! Who needs editors?! Just write a little Perl script to do it for you.