A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda

[Chris Lambacher]

On Sun, May 07, 2006 at 11:57:55AM -0700, Alex Martelli wrote:
> > [1] I'm considering introducing bugs or misdesigns that have to be
> > fixed
> >     as part of training for the purposes of this discussion. Also the
> 
> Actually, doing it _deliberately_ (on "training projects" for new people
> just coming onboard) might be a good training technique; what you learn
> by finding and fixing bugs nicely complements what you learn by studying
> "good" example code.  I do not know of this technique being widely used
> in real-life training, either by firms or universities, but I'd love to
> learn about counterexamples.
> 

When I was learning C in university my professor made us fix broken programs.
He did this specifically to teach us to understand how to read compiler
warnings/errors and also how to debug software.  The advantage of this in the
tutorial setting was that the TAs knew what the error was and could assist the
people in finding bugs in a controlled environment.  When I later worked with
people who did not go through this training I found many of them had no clue
how to decipher the often cryptic C/C++ compiler warnings/errors (think
Borland Turbo C or MS Visual C++, GCC is pretty good in comparison) or where
to start looking for a bug (an affliction I do not possess).

-Chris