I’ve recently come across an interesting article detailing an existing bug in the binary search implementation presented in Programming Pearls (Addison-Wesley, 1986; Second Edition, 2000). The article can be found here and it presents a bug that can easily be overlooked. Many of us may be very familiar with the problem and many a times we notice it, but easily disregard it because we say that it cannot occur in practice. The nice thing about this bug is that if the program would have been described in pseudocode, the bug would not be there. I really advise you to read the article… it presents how the bug was discovered and what was the impact.
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Recently I’ve tried to purchase a laptop for a friend from Sony Style. All was good initially. I was able to pay for it, got an order confirmation and a delivery estimate. I waited for the assigned time to receive the laptop. After the time has elapsed (and I still didn’t get the laptop) I went online to track the product and to my amazement I noticed that it was delivered to another address with an invalid signature. I notified Sony of the problem and they issued another order with express delivery for a second laptop.
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A long time ago, an English professor taught the class a carol. Since then, every time I think about the sentence: Christmas is coming… I remember that carol. Now, as the title suggests, Christmas is indeed coming (almost knocking at the door… I have a thing for pointing the obvious) and it’s been almost 3 months since I got in the States. Many things have happened since, mostly pleasant.
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