User names match... are you the original author? Why commenting in the third person?
replyBecause it was him... 10 months ago?
replyit's still weird. if i'm talking about something i wrote 10 months ago i'd say something like, "when i originally wrote this i was trying to say ...".
replynot "when the author wrote this, he was trying to say"
saghm still thought this was a weird explanation when he wrote this comment
replyI guess that makes sense. Based on my math lectures during college, mathematicians can often be terrible at communication to other humans, so that would explain why they think what they said is different from how pretty much everyone else reads it.
replyApparently the mathematician author doesn't understand the meaning of his own natural language quantifiers. “it is not in general possible to find bugs by examining the code” means “it is not in general possible to find ANY bugs by examining the code”, not “it is not in general possible to find ALL bugs by examining the code”
replyAnd the first interpretation is relevant but wrong, whereas the second interpretation is true but irrelevant.
P.S. It seems that the author meant to say “it is not in general possible to find a given bug by examining the code”, which again is true but not relevant.
Thank you, I thought I was getting crazy! The self-proclaimed amateur mathematician[0] who quotes his own writing in 3rd person has some stuff to work on I guess.
replyOfc you're correct in that sense.
replyI would add that (related to your "maintainability" point) ensuring the code is as simple as possible, and thus much more likely to be "debuggable by review", is a goal of review. Even that won't prevent bugs in the absolute sense, as you rightly say, but it boosts your probabilities.
deleted
reply