Boring Aspects of Programming

What is your most hated aspect of programming?

Mine: building error checking into forms. If only customers could GET IT RIGHT the FIRST time!

Me?

Reading the books, slowly a page at a time, trying the examples, being pleased as a lark when it works, frustrated as all get out when it doesn't.

But I prefer this method over being spoon fed to me in a short two or three week/day classroom thing.

It's just painful to do it so slow. I want to have it done day before yesterday! Know what I mean?

Yeah, I know what you mean. I used to swear at my computer all the time. Nowadays, I can tell I'm a much better programmer. I hardly ever have to swear anymore. Usually, it's more like, "What the F..... oh. *fixed*"

hmmm.
validation, the learning curve (althought I'm now on to my fourth language so this curve is a lot shollower now!)

What really annoys me is when you finish a large project, which you know works (because you have been testing it all through development), but you still have to do a proper test. I find this so dull - clicking buttons, yes that works, click another button, etc etc......

That and having to create a RDBMS with approx 25 recordsets that all feed out into a single output, on my own, when I'm getting paid only a little over UK minimum wage (because I'm a gap year student 'getting experience'!). Grrrrrr

I don't mind the reading & researching... I'm just an absolute information sponge and love reading about new techniques, or things I haven't learned about yet...

The real pain in the ass for me is all the pre-planning. On really complex scripts being basically written from scratch, if there's no reference to begin with (like another similar script that you've written in the past), figuring out the whole process (what's going to tie into what, and how things are going to interact with each other, etc.) can mean you end up sitting down in front of lots of sheets of paper, drawing out flow charts and diagrams, etc. for a month or more before you've even started tapping away at the keyboard.

But, after all that's done, and the code starts coming together into a workable script or application, it's all worth it

No, reading is fun. I'm on Amazon all the time looking for new books. I think I've bought up all of the PHP gems though. At least, so far.

I think the worst thing are... semi colons.
At least for the languages I know of (which I can count with one hand, and won't even use all the fingers =P) it works fine and well.... then you're finally done, but somewhere in the whole process of cutting those output lines which only serves to check if the it is actually going inside or calling the functions and etc, you *gasp!* deleted a semi colon!

Happened to me when I've reached the abnormal number of 150+ (oh sweet ignorance of thinking 150 was a big number...) and the computer would stop working for some time because it was... yes... counting the errors.

Took me 4 hours to realize I had forgotten a colon. After all the deletions and commenting out stuff, my program never worked quite as well.

Of course, that was one day before I learned about recursion, which made the same program in 2 pages. And became a nightmare.

Program I did is called Towers of Hanoi. I'm sure most of you know about it =)

the programming part lol

I'd have to differ w/ everyone above. My most hated aspect is learning new stuff. I like what I do, and what I already know is enough to conquer most requests. But, when the dreaded time comes for the learning of new material...well my brain clams up...and it comes slowly to me. Call me phobic of change if you will. But, I'm getting over my fear of all things new...and well slowly but surely I'm adding to my knowledge base. Besides...I thought the learning part was supposed to be done...when they handed me that nifty piece of paper they call a diploma (college that is)

Try using some premade testing functions, like email
tester, age range tester, etc

But probably you already do this

Getting ahead of myself.
I hate when I get into a groove and neglect to test for errors while i go along, instead just writing & assuming that everything is gravy. Then having 3X as big of a block of code to check through for an error.

Starting off can sometimes be boring for me, unless I have a really good idea. Once I get into the code I keep going, but it is just sometimes really hard for me to start.

I've got a good error-output function that I reuse the heck out of, but as for testing form fields I usually have to custom do everything aside from email addresses and such.

I'm thinking about creating an error-checking class as my first object-oriented project since I haven't really gotton into that methodology. I'm too old-school...

Reusing code is always good advice.

Just don't try VB 6 or below because commands and such just dont work like they should.

In VB i hate how you have to troubleshoot everything. Sometimes you need to add a 1 here and there and stupid *plum* just to get it working.

In VB I hate how it's all Micro$oft - I gave up doing VB 9 years ago