Calling private base methods

[Duncan Booth]

Isaac Rodriguez <isaac.rodriguez at comcast.net> wrote:

>> In real life, the skills of the two people in
>> question are likely to be much closer, and since designing libraries for
>> use in all kinds of applications is a really hard task, it's likelier
>> than the library designer will make an error in designing his or her
>> library, rather than the application programmer in using that library.
> 
> Those are called defects or "bugs". When I find a bug in a library or
> an application, I submit a bug report. I might have to work around it
> for a little bit, but I don't just work around it and call it goods.
> Library designers are normal programmers that work under a set of
> requirements like any other programmer (application programmers
> included), but when I find a bug in an application, I report it and
> try to work around it until it gets fixed; I don't hack the
> application or re-write my own just because a found a bug.
> 
You appear to have led a very sheltered life if the only libraries you ever 
use are ones where you can always get a change to the library api in a 
timely manner.

In the particular case where I hacked around a private variable, the 
library in question was burned into ROM on thousands of consumer devices. 
Getting the library to change simply wasn't an option.