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Roll Your Own

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©2000-2017 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products

Roll Your Own

Definition of Upward Compatible

I’ve finally learned what upward compatible means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes.

~ Dennie van Tassel
You’ve always wanted to write system level code. Now is your chance. Ignore the standard libraries and write your own. It will look great on your resumé.

  1. Roll Your Own BNF (Backus-Naur Form)

    : Always document your command syntax with your own, unique, undocumented brand of BNF notation. Never explain the syntax by providing a suite of annotated sample valid and invalid commands. That would demonstrate a complete lack of academic rigour. Railway diagrams are almost as gauche. Make sure there is no obvious way of telling a terminal symbol (something you would actually type) from an intermediate one — something that represents a phrase in the syntax. Never use typeface, colour, caps, or any other visual clues to help the reader distinguish the two. Use the exact same punctuation glyphs in your BNF notation that you use in the command language itself, so the reader can never tell if a (…), […], {…} or … is something you actually type as part of the command, or is intended to give clues about which syntax elements are obligatory, repeatable or optional in your BNF notation. After all, if they are too stupid to figure out your variant of BNF, they have no business using your program.

  2. Roll Your Own Allocator

    : Everyone knows that debugging your dynamic storage is complicated and time consuming. Instead of making sure each class has no storage leaks, reinvent your own storage allocator. It just mallocs space out of a big arena. Instead of freeing storage, force your users to periodically perform a system reset that clears the heap. There’s only a few things the system needs to keep track of across resets — lots easier than plugging all the storage leaks; and so long as the users remember to periodically reset the system, they’ll never run out of heap space. Imagine them trying to change this strategy once deployed!

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