The agony of defeat, or something that feels a lot like it.

[fujidude]

A few days ago I was working on an old program I wrote for the A8. It is a utility meant for use in SpartaDOS and as written in Action. I had decided to revamp it a little by cleaning it up and also adding a bit extra functionality. I spent quite a lot of time doing so because I had to re-learn my own code and also the Atari, SDX, and Action specifics needed for the program.

 

Then it happened... I used Action's write command to save the executable code after a compile. The only thing is, I had been resaving the source code so much, that I used the same file name for the executable! Ouch. I was ticked off.

 

Well, yesterday I set about doing my work all over again. I used a different naming system this time. I wasn't going to get burned again! Well, I got so used to saving that source under the new name with all the rapid fire editing, recompiling, and testing cycles, that I did it again!!! I am sickened. And as if that weren't enough, my executable has a bug I need to fix. So it isn't even like I at least have a executable that I would release anywhere. Uhhg.

 

Well, I still have my 1990 version of the source code. I can start again with my enhancement work, if I were a little less beaten down. I feel like the biggest idiot for this. I've been too coddled by modern systems that have nice fetures like "File already exists. Overwrite?" There just isn't room for that kind of stuff in Action.

 

Any others out here who have ever done something like that to themselves (and is willing to admit it)? Please let me know I'm not the only code chump to have done this.

 

[Paul Westphal]

Nice work, Bonehead. I have done the same, only four mistakes in a row on the same program. I think I have you beat.

 

Lessons learned.

Regards,

 

- Bigger Bonehead

[a8isa1]

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

 

I can't say for sure whether I've done exactly the same thing. However, something similar that I did repeatedly is use two windows to copy lines from one program to another.

 

When one reads a file into Action!'s second window then that file's name is the one that Action! remembers. If one goes back and does some editing in window 1 and then saves the changes it's so easy to write the program to the wrong file.

 

Though this is an annoying thing to do at least I had saved my last edits somewhere.

 

I usually had backups of the files from which I tried to copy lines so I could restore that file.

 

If I didn't catch myself making the mistake then I problably thought I lost the changes.

 

-SteveS

Edited December 29, 2014 by a8isa1

[Keatah]

yes.

[fujidude]

It is good? to hear that I'm not alone in doing this. Thanks for sharing.

[kenjennings]

The first time I had a tape fail to read a saved program, I learned to save twice, once each on different tapes. (And to use good tapes). (And to keep the tape player clean).

 

The first time I had hosed work I was doing on a floppy, I learned to start rotating several floppies as working disks, so if I destroyed the most recent copy I had relatively recent versions to fall back to. Today, even for work on linux I'll make a new directory named for the date and copy the last versions of files into there to begin work.

 

Self inflicted issues are nothing compared to all the data I've lost over the years due to Microsoft issues. If Microsoft reimbursed me for all the files trashed by bugs in its OS and programs over the last several decades, then Bill Gates would be working as my cabana boy at my pool. (in the back yard of my million dollar mansion) ( in Costa Rica)

[The Usotsuki]

I once accidentally had the audio output from an Avisynth script to the same filename as the script. OOPS

[evilmoo]

I'm sure we've all done it probably on a somewhat regular basis. I'm having trouble remembering any explicit examples of my own failure, but just last night I was remembering when I had typed in a game from either Antic or Analog back in the day. I let some genius borrow my disk, and he types 'L. "GAME.BAS" '. You can imagine my anger as a result.

 

So normally I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions, but I've decided that NOW (rather than January 1st), I'm going to start using git and github.com to store remote copies of whatever I'm working on. I will also use 'git commit' and 'git push' as parts of my Makefile, so all the work is saved and moved somewhere remote automatically.

 

Even though you're working on an Atari, you can still work through an emulator, save your files to the H: drive, and push them from there.

[Keatah]

Jeese.. whata jerk, the OP.. Even I couldn't do something that stupid. Only stupider.

 

I had a graphics program I typed in from a book. It was on the Apple II and it drew a number of lines and circles and other simple patterns like spirograph or kaleidoscope. And I saved it. And over the summer I added my own routines and demos, a series of 5-liner programs all in sequence. About maybe 10 of them.

 

And I got into organizing my library and thought I had a copy elsewhere and thus blissfully formatted the disk to make room for warez. Turns out I didn't have a 2nd copy. And still to this day it bothers me.

 

I recently retyped the book/magazine parts, but I have to re-create from memory my other demo routines. I have some incidental photos of it in the background. But not everything. There is a small chance it is buried in a Dalton Disk Disintegrator [DDD] packed file or something, but I have no idea where.

[+therealbountybob]

(Ramp Rage) I'm usually making multiple changes everywhere over several drives - the worse one was when I loaded a backup image from APE to access a file and forgot to put it back so I ended up with 2 sets of files with changes, that was not good

 

Not sure if this is relevant to Action! but for my assembler files I'm adding a comment line at the start of each which I list and run each time I make any changes

10 ; save #D2:movepf2.m65

though this caused problems when I ran out of space on one disk and then saved to another forgetting to change the drive # in the comments so I ended up with duplicate versions later on

 

I'm also using a separate drive for my object code to keep it away and again commenting the command

20 ; asm,,#D4:rr.obj

 

All good fun, we all screw up. Often if you realise straight away it's not too bad as you can quickly re-do most things. It's much worse when you don't know you've screwed up until later

[fujidude]

I think today I will re-do it. And this time.... I will be very careful. I wish Action had defaults so I could just do a W MYPROG and it would translate that to mean W D:MYPROG.OBJ or something like that. But it doesn't, so programmer beware! I wonder what that is in Latin...

[evilmoo]

But it doesn't, so programmer beware! I wonder what that is in Latin...

 

"Caveat programmator"?

[+bf2k+]

I do the same thing (or something similar) all the time... with the same result... lost source.

 

So for a few years now, when I compile to an executable, I save a copy of that source with a version # in the last three chars of the filename: 'fnamevvv.bas' and I keep my working source file as 'fname.bas' so when I do overwrite it, i have a close backup.

[dashv]

It is good? to hear that I'm not alone in doing this. Thanks for sharing.

Far from alone I've done this before with code but I can top ya.

 

Four years ago I taught my kid how to film and edit his own lego video.

 

I even decided to record the whole editing session. At least I thought I was recording.

 

The wonder and excitement in my sons face as he cut together video and added sound effect and music was awesome.

 

Then I went to dump the footage... Aparently I had bumped record before I intended so my recording was not the unusable moments. It was the boring crap before and after because when I was hitting "record" it was really stopping. And when I was hitting "stop" it was recording.

 

I really hate these cameras where stop and record are the same button.

 

The reason I say this tops times I've deleted code is because I am capable of writing it over and typically it's better than my earlier versions.

 

In this case I'll never capture that genuine awe, wonder, and excitement of him piecing together his first project and learning the tools ever again. :/

 

They say that "Pain is temporarily, film is forever."

I'd like to add

"Pain over lost film is also forever."

 

Hang in there man. We've all done it. If you have the space save a second copy every 5 minutes.

Edited December 29, 2014 by dashv

[Marius]

I know this... I had this in the past. Today I only use Synassembler which has a TARGET FILE feature in the source.

 

So it assembles to disk as soon as I give the command and it assembles to a weird filename (chosen by myself), which I probably would never used or could remind, so the chance I type that by accident is small.

 

I save my source to a normal name.

 

And when I want to test my just assembled program I use a BATCH file. So I n e v e r type the name of the executable, so I never get used to that ugly filename.

 

I have had this issue a lot in the past with Mac/65. I saved my source to: TEST.M65

and then I assembled to disk to TEST.M65

 

Sigh... my source was gone.

 

So you are not alone.

[Stefan Both]

Same here man ,

We use corel draw in the company i work for.

To avoid having no backup if the computer crashes,

I always save under a seperate file name,

after each major step...

If done, I have to export as dxf

To serve our milling machine.

Really bad, if you export the wrong

File named "Sicherungskopie von"...

That file is the version before the final.

It is automatical made by the program

With each save command...

I just tooked care of the version number...

totally ignoring the prefix "sicherungskopie von xxx"

Some thousands euro trash made......

Stefan

[ricortes]

Biggest mistake I made was when I had an Action! development disk I made up with a 720k 3.5" XF conversion. I mean I had everything on that disk I had ever done in Action including 80 column terminals, character set editors, playfield editors, desktop publishing, ... probably 500k of source code and object files. Never bothered to back it up and one day while saving a compiled program the disk just kept spinning and writing. I finally got scared and shut off everything. On reboot the disk had no files and zero free space so gone forever. I'm not sure to this day if it was a bug in the XF code or my code stepped on something it shouldn't have.

 

I was pretty good at naming conventions other then failing to back up important disks. Always started with <program name>.001 and incremented the extension every time I did something right. I would keep maybe 12 versions available at any one time in case I had to back track. Typically I would save ~every half hour of programming until done. Once done, I would delete all the but the final versions so the buggy and incomplete ones wouldn't make it out in the wild.

 

BTW: I was fooling around the umich archive and found something Action related. Someone wrote a map editor for Ultima IV in Action and it has some nice features. I haven't poured through the code yet but it is on my 'to do' list.

[russg]

A few days ago I was working on an old program I wrote for the A8. It is a utility meant for use in SpartaDOS and as written in Action. I had decided to revamp it a little by cleaning it up and also adding a bit extra functionality. I spent quite a lot of time doing so because I had to re-learn my own code and also the Atari, SDX, and Action specifics needed for the program.

 

Then it happened... I used Action's write command to save the executable code after a compile. The only thing is, I had been resaving the source code so much, that I used the same file name for the executable! Ouch. I was ticked off.

 

Well, yesterday I set about doing my work all over again. I used a different naming system this time. I wasn't going to get burned again! Well, I got so used to saving that source under the new name with all the rapid fire editing, recompiling, and testing cycles, that I did it again!!! I am sickened. And as if that weren't enough, my executable has a bug I need to fix. So it isn't even like I at least have a executable that I would release anywhere. Uhhg.

 

Well, I still have my 1990 version of the source code. I can start again with my enhancement work, if I were a little less beaten down. I feel like the biggest idiot for this. I've been too coddled by modern systems that have nice fetures like "File already exists. Overwrite?" There just isn't room for that kind of stuff in Action.

 

Any others out here who have ever done something like that to themselves (and is willing to admit it)? Please let me know I'm not the only code chump to have done this.

 

I have a different problem. I program in Atari800winplus4 most of the time, under Windows 8.1, up to date.

Windows 8.1 keeps separate files for the same ATR filename under run as administrator and just plain run. I'm going from w800wp4 to APE to access the code I SAVE.

I'm not sure how it works, even now. So, I run A800WP4 with plain 'run' and then run APE as administrator. There are two versions of the same .ATR some magical place

I don't know where, so what I SAVEd under A800WP4 doesn't show up on the 'SAME' .ATR under APE. If I try to extract a file from an .ATR with 'makeatr', the file

may not be there on the .ATR.

Edited December 30, 2014 by russg

[fujidude]

It really is helpful to hear some of these adventures many of you have had. It doesn't bring my code back, but it helps me want to re-create it. I like some of the techniques that some of you have used too. I think I might try the .001 .002 .003 type method. Or perhaps t01.act t02.act etc.

[billkendrick]

I was working on a KLAX clone under Linux (but written generally enough that I hoped to maybe one day port the algorithms to the Atari). Right when I decided it was in a good enough state to release an alpha version for friends to look at, I decided to clean up and modernize the Makefile a bit. I put a $< where I wanted a $> or something, and bam, I replaced my source code with a .o file. It's gone forever.

 

I had made a couple of nice videos of it and posted to Facebook, and immediately whipped up a set of notes on how I implemented it. But yeah, it's a sore wound now, so I don't think I'll be returning to it any time soon.

[Joey Z]

This didn't have anything specifically to do with coding, but once I was working on my PC. I don't remember what I was doing, but I had it apart and I just got done putting it back together. I turned it on, then I realized I had forgotten to plug in the power to the HDD. I looked at the screen, it was still in the memory test, before HDD detection, so I went to plug the 4 pin power connector into the drive. Big spark, power turned off and I got that feeling you get when you know you just did something you'll regret for years. Computer turned back on and everything worked fine except for the HDD. Not sure what I blew out on it, but it didn't spin, communicate with the computer, nothing.

 

Moral of the story is to not hot swap HDD power connection, or if you do, make sure the connector goes on STRAIGHT.

[fujidude]

Moral of the story is to not hot swap HDD power connection, or if you do, make sure the connector goes on STRAIGHT.

 

Just don't do it at all, unless it is a hotswapable drive connecting to hot swappable chasis. End of story. Yeah, that had to get you down a bit.

[Joey Z]

 

Just don't do it at all, unless it is a hotswapable drive connecting to hot swappable chasis. End of story. Yeah, that had to get you down a bit.

well, there's always going to be that temptation to hot swap the drive when you're not supposed to.. Don't get me wrong, I recomend no one does it. but on the other hand, I do it all the time. I've only blown that one drive, no others since. I think the real problem was putting the connector in at an angle.

 

But agreed, if you do it, fully expect the harddrive to light on fire, explode, burn your house down, or, at the very least, suffer data loss. not to mention potential damage to your PSU

[Heaven/TQA]

happenend to my just few days prior releasing AD:6502 (Arsantica 2)... I screwed one part (I think it was the radial Blur part 4) and could not repair it... I was using Eclipse WUDSN and did not know the powerful local history function and one colleague mentioned that I could even had a file backup done by my backup system. (and I configured it running once a week... so this would threw me back 1 week ).

 

So it is not only old systems... most of the time the failure and bug sits before the keyboard.

 

Now I setup my file backup to daily and I know how WUDSN can help a lot in keeping track of source code changes. Check that out!!! (compare local history as an important example).

[Tezz]

I've certainly lost some work on the real hardware in the past. Nowadays with cross platform development I usually start a coding session by making a copy of my current source files and I always email an archive of the days work to myself with some notes so I have an offsite backup and a historical record that I can refer to if needed. I make sure to image my hard drives once a month. Backing up is a chore but unavoidable if you want to sleep well