Communications can be so hard when you want them to be so simple. I was asking for help, and my victim was earnestly going about doing just that, but in the process decided I needed to exit a live edit session, losing some of my latest changes. Fortunately, not much was lost, but sadly, it made me blow my cool. Then we got involved in a convoluted discussion of just about everything except the precise thing I was asking about. It was a bit rough on my nerves. I'll recover, but it made me see how hard it sometimes can be to explain what you want to know when nobody thinks about the subject the same way.
Otherwise, I've made some good progress on my current project. I found ways to put off the need for the answer to my original question, and I'm almost ready to actually find out myself anyhow.
For those of you who don't know this, programming is made up of thousands of almost arbitrary sequences of letters and numbers, known as names. If you don't understand what a name refers to, or what general relevance it has, it is often nigh impossible to get a straight answer to "what does this name mean?"
I'll spare you all the details, because those who know will be nodding and those who don't will be thinking "hmmm...rather existential."
All you Holy Grail fans will probably have a similar question cross your minds.
p.s. I'll be transcribing all those old entries from paper soon! Really, I promise!
Posted by David Cymbala at May 11, 2004 09:07 PM