OSDev.org

Okay, so in light of the fact that we have a, "what does your OS look like," thread, I thought I'd do something similar, but at the same time, unique.

IMHO, it is kind of fun to look back at your history in programming, and to laugh at all of the divvy moments and dumb mistakes you have made. So, in light of this, I thought it could also be fun to share some of these moments. Here are some of mine:

• Back when I was working on a game in python, I wanted to display a room. But instead, I displayed a rooom (note the spelling). Pythons IDE does not flag things like this, as variables don't have to be explicitly declared. I had to fight this for at least a week to find it.
  
  Recently, in my OS, I made a bootloader for the El Torito spec, in the hope that soon, I may get the OS done enough to write an installer, and get it on some real hardware. However, all did not go according to plan, and for one of my functions, I passed a parameter (pointer I think) in DX, and a drive number in DL. This took me 6 months to work out, grinding kernel development to an almost complete halt.
  
  I was working on a dynamically linked list in a text editor I was making (the project died, I made the mistake of not backing up before making major changes ^^), and I allocated on the stack. I'm sure many of you can see where this is going. On the free() function, used to delete members, it crashed. I rewrote the code, about 10 times, posted it on countless forums, countless times, and in the end, thought to myself, this is going nowhere. Left off it for about a week, then all of a sudden, while I was at the park, staring into space, it just clicked!

I will post more as I get them, but until then, post on here what yours are.

You should learn how to use your tools better. The problems described here shouldn't take more than a few minutes to solve each. The last one sounds like an incremental linking problem.

death2all wrote:(the project died, I made the mistake of not backing up before making major changes ^^)

The wording suggests that you're still making the mistake of not using version control. You really should.

Okay, look, most of these are way in the past. This was intended as a bit of fun, where we all share our dumb mistakes, have a laugh, and enjoy ourselves. One needs a break from all the low level technical stuff that kernel development entails every once in a while. I intended this thread to be that break. Obviously, either people are not reading what I have put, or simply lack a sense of humour. Sorry for wasting everybody's time, I will find humour elsewhere. You both have just killed this thread before it even got started.

We don't all do dumb mistakes because we have studied and have experience. You're probably expecting script kiddies to answer, judging from your original post. Writing kernels is not for everyone. That's not to say that we don't write bugs, of course.

well from the way I have learned, we tend to get sloppy after long coding sessions, and it is mostly this sloppiness that i was referring to. To be perfectly honest, why do i bother. Clearly, you people have no sense of humour. And unless you begin to realise that and appreciate this topic for what it is intended to be, I will just delete it, and remember, for future reference, to keep things completely humour free, else you will try and turn it on me. Yes, you might have years of experience, more so than anyone in the world for all I care, but I can guarantee you, everybody makes stupid mistakes from time to time, due to sloppiness, lack of effort, or just downright idiocy. Now this was intended as a lighthearted escape from low level kernel programming, with the hope that people would appreciate it, join in with the thread, and we could all have a laugh at how stupid we all can be, and enjoy it. But instead, you must insist on shitting all over it, refusing to let all but the technical questions and queries onto the forum. Seriously, guys, no offence, but lighten up. This forum is incredibly dull. Lets face it. There are technical questions, then there are threads for sharing screenys of our OSs running, but nothing that we can laugh at, or extract humour from. That is what this thread was intended for. Something to laugh at. Something lighthearted. A break from OS development, to keep us firmly attached to the real world. But no. I can't even have a laugh with the people who are "supposed" to understand the humour involved. This speaks spades about the lot of you.

First of all, you need to calm down. No one has jumped at you and there is no need to use foul language. The purpose of this forum is not entertainment, and even if it were, the category you picked is clearly the wrong one (try General Ramblings instead next time).

Secondly, we did get what you were trying to say but look at it this way --- if a surgeon admited to his friends that he cut off the penis of a patient because he was tired and they were outraged, how would you look at this situation? The fact that you are not harming in the process a human being is not an excuse. When we make mistakes, we fall back on our discipline to fix them (i.e., write tests, use debuggers and profilers, make sure we have proper build and VC systems, etc.) --- that's what professionalism is all about.

P.S.: You cannot delete the thread because we have posted several comments on it. Take a big breath and stop being a crybaby.

... I already had a topic like this:
http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=19076

Dang that was a long time ago. I was kind of wishing it would get stickied given that OS dev should be full of silly little easy to fix but hard to find mistakes, because face it: everyone makes mistakes that we can all laugh at and learn from.

Please accept my sincerest apologies. I am much calmer now. I was not in a particularly good mood yesterday, which is why I was so quick to fly off the handle. I hope that everybody can forget all of this, and we can all carry on our lives as though this never happened. I understand, that I was irrational, and antisocial, and I am truly sorry for this, and if there is anything I can do (within reason) to make it up to you all, don't hesitate to let me know.

It's okay, we're not here to pick on you as a person. As such, I'm sorry for any misunderstandings as well On my first post, I was only trying to give a suggestion to what you should do in the future to avoid such problems.

I realise that now, and I thank you for your advice. Perhaps, if the mods would like to move the thread to general ramblings, it would be possible to continue the thread as I intended it originally? Its ok if that can't happen, but I would like to see a turnaround on this thread, after all the grief it has caused pretty much everyone involved