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Zen and the Art of Computer Programming


When we learn to code we work on simple problems, maybe the sort of tasks that were originally used to test and develop our favourite languages, libraries and apis. In a nutshell, simple solutions to simple problems. 

But, when complexity takes over, rules often go out of the window - there may be causes, but these cannot be easily identified and defined. The may be at a 'lower level', perhaps in dependencies or even compilation errors. 

I've just had to resolve one such problem arising from the failure to display of child widgets in an eventBox. After modifying the gnoclOptChild code in the parseoptions.c module to offer the ability to replace child objects in a GtkBin, the new code worked for other GtkBin objects but not for an eventBox. 

The solution was to copy the contents of the gnoclOptChild function and divide the code between the configure and cget module functions. This also needed a modification to the EBoxOptions array. Happy again now!

So why the Zen and Computer programming? 

Always keep an open mind, things doesn't always go the way you expect them to.

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