[rescue] Small servers (was Re: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100)

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 08:41:19PM -0400, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> We are still around, but many of us have moved onto other things. 
> Lately I've been writing custom financial applications in Java.

Honestly, how much does knowing how the "bare metal" works help you 
in writing code that runs in a virtual machine, on a different computer?

There are some things that I learned from programming in Assembly language
that make my code better than most code written today. Slower, but better. :-)

1. Always initialize variables.

2. Validate the parameters to a system call before you call it.

3. Validate the results of a system call (as in don't use a NULL pointer).

4. Always make sure the data fits in the space allocated for it.

5. Always make sure an I/O operation succeeds. 

6. Put lots of debugging statments in your code.
   
7. Comments, comments, comments. 
 
8. Write as simple code as possible. If it is difficult for someone to
   understand, it will be impossible to maintain. (KISS).

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM