Comment Re:It's not about just embedded devices... (Score 1) 447
I learned that values should be expressed as variables even if the coder does not expect them to change.
It's not unheard of to hardcore values while debugging. Say for example that one wanted to find the problems in the getTime() function. You might go through and comment out alot of the calls from getTime() to other functions, replacing them with values that you knew were correct . For example sendTimeRequest(getNTPServerAddress()) might be replaced with sendTimeRequest("128.105.39.11:23457"). Now suppose that after you had isolated and fixed the problem you forget to reinstate one of those calls. Now you have a piece of software that appears to work except that it always sends requests to the same server+port.
It's not unheard of to hardcore values while debugging. Say for example that one wanted to find the problems in the getTime() function. You might go through and comment out alot of the calls from getTime() to other functions, replacing them with values that you knew were correct . For example sendTimeRequest(getNTPServerAddress()) might be replaced with sendTimeRequest("128.105.39.11:23457"). Now suppose that after you had isolated and fixed the problem you forget to reinstate one of those calls. Now you have a piece of software that appears to work except that it always sends requests to the same server+port.
This might have been caused by a simple mistake and not the really stupid design flaw that declaring the time server as a constant would be.
