Fighting old habits
Sometimes old coding habits are handy, but they can also get in the way. Like char vs string. I've been coding in C++ maybe six years now, and almost all of the time I've been using the old char arrays instead of string. Partially its my inherent distrust of automatic memory management (and its effect on things like heap fragmentation), partially its my need to supervise and optimize every action the computer is taking, and maybe there's some value in limiting how much memory inputs can use and preventing denial of service attacks; but really I was just resisting change.

So I've been using strings now, and it hasn't bitten me yet, but I hit a real point of uncomfortableness this evening. I had built up some great routines for dealing with parameter lists (like param1=aaa&param2=uuu&param3), but I had a form that only had one parameter. Did I really want to copy around memory and create all these complex structures just to get the value out when I could just find the '=' with strchr()and then set the char * to point to the next character? I finally decided, yes for a couple reasonts:

• Higher order tools should always be prefered to lower level
• Performance just isn't enough of a factor
• If I did this one routine different from all the others, then anyone that had to maintain this code would curse me

This last reason didn't surface right away, but its probably why I made the decision. (I often know the right answer long before I figure all the reasons why its the right answer.) I still have to fight the feeling that I'm burning cycles for no reason, I am burning cycles, but there's a reason, its just a social reason, not a technical reason.

  ¶ 9:00 PM