pointer to issues

Well,  I wanted to note down one of the most silliest bugs I have done in my coding. I started off my code thinking that I will create a array of string pointers and allocate memory for each string dynamically. I did my coding initially with that assumption and everything was working fine. Now, as time passed I had forgotten that i had started off that way and started assuming that I had declared a char pointer of fixed length.

And the size was declared to be 355. So, basically this array could hold 355 strings. I did my entire code assuming that I am handling an array of string pointers but overlooked the basic declaration where I had declared it to hold 355 records. So, what happened was at one point of time the code had to handle more than 355 recs and my code was going for a toss. I didnt do the stress testing and this didnt come up in the Test Env. It came up once but I was looking for the issue elsewhere.

Then I had to come to the client place to Mexico to support the go-live and the code bombed. Imagine the client sitting on top of your head and you had to deliver and had none to reach out to. And not one issue but ‘n’ number of issues. I was thinking and working for about 30 hours without going anywhere near the solution. I had already sent a SOS to my manager at India and at Mexico and we were trying to reach out to different people. Then finally one of the client techie questioned me why I had declared it that way. And asked me to recheck. I did a quick recheck and changed the size of the constant and lo!! the code worked.

I cursed myself for this blunder. But sometimes this is how you learn. And I can never ever forget this in my life. It gave me a good teaching of all the loopholes that you should expect in a code. And the importance of quality reviewing. And good testing too!!! Finally one correct question saved the day for me and the client as well. The code is working fine now and I can do a lot of tweaking now to increase performance. But, the biggest of blunders at the least unexpected place, just because you forgot to look at the header file for the size. I am such a moron!!!!

Morons

Its amazing how we encounter morons in our work. I really wonder if these people have the basic common sense required to function in the world properly. These people spoil everyone’s life to lead a useful life. Atleast, thats what they think about it.

I called this person yesterday and had a few words. Actually, since we both were excited not much was communicated. She is trying to take the responsibility of balancing my life. I dont normally like people doing this to me, but this girl has a way with me. I can never win an argument with her except when she is undecided about what to do.

Its the trust that she has sown in me that makes me appreciate her so much. I should never ever break it in life. Only God can help me do that. I am unnecessarily getting stressed out. Please God, help me get a workable solution to this issue and we would be well on our way to do this work in a good way. Still a long way to go in that.

I dont want to say much about this person because what I have learnt from my previous experience is that I tend to extrapolate these kind of relations and end up breaking the relation as such. I shouldnt do it this time. She has been a good person and I would like to be the same with her. Its amazing how life teaches you things in the hard way so that you never forget. I really wonder why this life and why we live here in such a mechanical way!!