When computers try to be clever

[dummzeuch 1517]

Don’t you just hate it when computers try to be clever but get it wrong? OK, it’s not really the computer itself but the programmer who tried to be clever. The problem usually is that he overlooked a corner case that you then hit where his sophisticated strategy fails and leaves you with something – lets say less desirable.

Today I wasted several hours trying to find out what was wrong with my hack to create a TSpeedButton which can take the input focus (which standard TSpeedButtons can’t), by using a TBitBtn instead. I blogged about this before.

There was a certain button width which caused the button to display only a square part of the caption. At closer inspection it turned out to not be a fixed width but kind of a width to height ratio that caused the problem. Here are several buttons with different widths and heights that show this behaviour:

 

read on in my blog post.

[Uwe Raabe 2064]

IIRC, that functionality exists since Delphi 1. After 25 years someone finally managed to hit it. Congratulations. 

[Sherlock 663]

I actually know of this feature, and am not ashamed to admit that I have used it. But it was a long time ago.

 

The pains you have to go through to debug GExperts would have gotten me to quit frustratedly, I am not very patient with "hobby projects". How hard would it be to embed GEXperts into a mockup to debug? Basically all plugin developers could unite and profit from this.

 

Sherlock

[Uwe Raabe 2064]

1 hour ago, Sherlock said:

How hard would it be to embed GEXperts into a mockup to debug?

Gerrit Beuze, the original inventor of MMX Code Explorer, managed to provide sort of a Micro IDE to test things.

[dummzeuch 1517]

1 hour ago, Sherlock said:

How hard would it be to embed GEXperts into a mockup to debug?

Quite hard, all least if I tried to do that for the whole GExperts. It not only uses many calls of the OTAPI but also hacks into the known native forms and components structure. It might be possible for some of the experts, if they can be separated from the rest. Given the size, long history and large number of developers who left their mark in the code, there are too many interdependencies to make that an easy task. I tried to clean up a bit, but on the other hand I'm probably also the one who introduced new dependencies over the - wow, more than 10 - years I have been involved in the project.

[dummzeuch 1517]

1 hour ago, Sherlock said:

I actually know of this feature, and am not ashamed to admit that I have used it. But it was a long time ago.

I probably knew that too, many years ago, but have since forgotten, or at least didn't think of it when I saw this bug.