One of the pages I still get a lot of trafic on this site from is the one with the caveman debugging post. It turns out that people come across the term and wonder what it is, and googling it actually leads right to my blog at the top of the results. Wow.
Well, today is going to be a post in a similar vain. This time about the name for the first episode of a tv series or just the first of a season.
I have used several terms for this, but most just don't sound too well. "Beginner" and "Opener" just don't do the trick for me. We have finale on the one hand and together with the first episode of a season it makes one of the aspects of tv series that particularly interest me.
I knew I had heard a good term for it once, but I couldn't remember. So yesterday, I did some googling. Well, I ended up not finding it through googling, but through navigating my way through wikipedia. And there it was, in an article marked as bad because it didn't cite source: Premiere.
This word has one very important quality. Even if people have never heard of the term before, they will quickly enough understand what you mean with it. That is, in my opinion it's strongest quality. Of course, it's also important that it just sounds good and that it fills what in my opinion was a niche.
What I would like to do is propose the terms "Series Premiere" and "Season Premiere" when talking about tv series. And what I am going to do about it, is just use them. And I urge you to do the same. And to spread the word, of course.
So: Premiere it is!
Showing posts with label terminology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terminology. Show all posts
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Caveman Debugging
I recently heard about this new term: caveman debugging. It's basically where you make a program that you think might have a problem diagnose itself while it is running. Here and there you make it output useful information that might lead you to understand what is wrong - and what you can do about that.
It's a rather common thing and I do use it from time to time. I mean, it's nice and all to have a debugger, but sometimes it just works better to do it the old-fashioned way. Or maybe you just happen to be working in an environment with no debugger. Or just not a good one. Well, no matter what your reason is this time, you might well be wanting to use this technique.
And as a matter of fact, I had been looking for a name for it for a while now. How else can I refer to it clearly. Some call it printf-debugging, after one of the traditional functions used for this purpose (the printf function from C formats text and outputs it to the command line), but it's a little unimaginative. And it just doesn't fit all languages.
This term I read about, caveman debugging, has none of these problems. It really does capture the technique, but at the same time it doesn't really look down on it either. At least, not in my eyes. I mean, the word caveman sounds like strong and powerful, yet crude. Well, that's exactly what it is, so no complaining here. It also sounds like it's old, and that's what it is - it is the first type of debugging that was around - however, it does not sound like "superseded" and it is not. It's still a useful technique and should not be shunned. Well, that's why I like the name. However, the term has its own problem: people don't know it and may not guess what you mean.
So I propose a solution to that. Just use it. All of you. Write about it. (I did... uhm, am doing?) Tell each person who wonders what it is what it is. Just use it. From this moment on, it's a term in my book. And that means it's now my responsibility to spread the word.
It's a rather common thing and I do use it from time to time. I mean, it's nice and all to have a debugger, but sometimes it just works better to do it the old-fashioned way. Or maybe you just happen to be working in an environment with no debugger. Or just not a good one. Well, no matter what your reason is this time, you might well be wanting to use this technique.
And as a matter of fact, I had been looking for a name for it for a while now. How else can I refer to it clearly. Some call it printf-debugging, after one of the traditional functions used for this purpose (the printf function from C formats text and outputs it to the command line), but it's a little unimaginative. And it just doesn't fit all languages.
This term I read about, caveman debugging, has none of these problems. It really does capture the technique, but at the same time it doesn't really look down on it either. At least, not in my eyes. I mean, the word caveman sounds like strong and powerful, yet crude. Well, that's exactly what it is, so no complaining here. It also sounds like it's old, and that's what it is - it is the first type of debugging that was around - however, it does not sound like "superseded" and it is not. It's still a useful technique and should not be shunned. Well, that's why I like the name. However, the term has its own problem: people don't know it and may not guess what you mean.
So I propose a solution to that. Just use it. All of you. Write about it. (I did... uhm, am doing?) Tell each person who wonders what it is what it is. Just use it. From this moment on, it's a term in my book. And that means it's now my responsibility to spread the word.
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