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If I may jump into your very interesting discussion with a small observation drawn from decades of practice:
"Design top-down; implement bottom-up"
To take your example:
DrawRectangle(Point startPoint, int width, int height) What happens if width or heights are negative numbers? What if they are 0? Do I throw an exception? Should I just ignore it? Either you design exhaustively and are prepared to contemplate all possibilities or you start from the other end and discover all the obscure conditions and corner cases as you build up your project.
I could keep hammering down this point discussing integration of external components and other such things, but assuming you accept my suggestion and start building from bottom up, it could be quite a long time before you have something that you can start debugging. You can shorten this time (I call it the "valley of despair") by building unit tests. These will give you some confidence that at least individual bricks more or less work.
If your initial top-down design was not completely crap, the bricks you made will fit (approximately) in your project. It is now the time of integration tests and functional tests to shake up your edifice and smooth any rough corners that remain.
Throughout this process document, document, document. If you need the DrawRectangle function in another project, it's much easier if you know all the little quirks it has without having to read the code.
Mircea
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Let's talk about Draw Rectangle, because I actually solved that problem in the wild.
draw::rectangle(destination,rect16(0,0,99,99),color_t::purple);
The draw class acts on "draw destinations" which are like canvases. The first argument is always this target. In this case destination above
The second argument is always the location(s) of the object to be drawn - in this case, a rectangle with unsigned 16 bit coordinates. (my lib uses rect16 for that, or srect16 for signed)
gfx/include/gfx_positioning.hpp at master · codewitch-honey-crisis/gfx · GitHub[^]
Before I built the drawing operations, I built up the position elements, as shown in that file.
Rectangles can be normalized, or denormalized, and have a fundamental orientation in my libraries.
For draw::rectangle, the orientation is irrelevant, so rect16(99,99,0,0) would be equivalent to that routine.
rect16 newrect = myrect.normalize();
myrect.normalize_inplace();
That will ensure the rectangle's dimensions are intelligible to this routine. Some routines honor the rectangle orientation, such as draw::bitmap, which can flip the bitmap on the x and/or y axis.
I built this constructively. Or at least, i'd get to the point in the drawing code where I needed, say a rectangle element, and then I went back and designed the positioning elements as exhaustively as I could at the time.
I then continued where I left off with my new toolbelt of rects, points, sizes and paths.
Doing this I've managed to create a library that has survived several years with hardly any major architectural changes, and very few breaking code changes, none recently.
I was careful. I was fastidious. And one thing I did that I don't normally do is I designed for completeness rather than for use cases, primarily because I didn't have all the use cases my end users (including me) would use it for in front of me. So I envisioned a model of completeness and coded to that.
Take a look at that positioning code and you'll find I covered pretty much every eventuality.
Like I said, I normally don't code that way, but in this case, breaking my rule served me well.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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If I understand you correctly, you followed my mantra: "Design top-down, implement bottom-up".
Mircea
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Indeed.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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My mantra as well
"Design top-down; implement bottom-up"
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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I can always plan my coding in minimal incremental steps that allow to use mock data to test results of each step.
But I am unsure how possible that would be in your case, after all I never did hardware related stuff.
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I typically do that too, but every once in awhile a solution has too many moving parts that all need to work together before you know if any of it works.
A good example was my SVG renderer. Without actually seeing what it was rendering you couldn't easily test it.
And for that to happen, a lot of things needed to go on under the covers - you had the parsing, the conversion to internal data structures suitable for rendering, and the actual rasterization process. All to make something visible at all.
Otherwise, it's really difficult to figure out what your values should be when they're all based on multiple trig function outputs.
Rock, meet hard place. Luckily it doesn't happen all that often, and also the thing that inspired my OP has now been implemented. Finally. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Yes, I do encounter that too and I go first with smallest possible example - mock expected parsing results and compare actual parsing results, then mock that into expected internal data structure and compare actual results
The last step would be a real pain, but still, mock that and compare actual results until they match (or you find out you were bad at mocking that part  ).
Did something like this with ZPL graphics label export. Testing code for text to image is often painful.
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I guess maybe part of it is I'm lazy? I can't fathom drilling down that much testing say, that SVG process. Some of it, like testing the parsing code, sure.
But testing the data structures is very difficult without working with how they're actually used by the rasterizer engine. It would be very difficult, but not impossible to design the tests. However, is it more work than testing the whole and risking the possibility of a goose chase over the whole mess if it goes sideways? In some cases yes, I think. In this case, I guess if I'm being totally honest with myself, I *chose* not to validate the data structures and rendering process individually - or the parsing code for that matter, but testing that is not a huge deal and I did a little while making it). But it paid off in the end, in any case. Since it worked, it would have been wasted effort to implement those tests, even though knowing that beforehand is impossible. It was certainly a gamble.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I am not so lucky with complex code, so I prefer not to gamble. But hey, no risk - no fun 
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I run(*).
(*) Moderate distances, currently 4-5 miles three times a week.
Seriously, I have this situation often. My stuff helps operate a 60-100 ft long printing press, so it's expensive and painful to debug. First, I have an emulator for the operational bits that manage the hardware. I can debug at my desk quite a lot.
When I have to make an ascent on the mountain like you describe, I tend to walk the code in the debugger and verify things along the way. If I have a complicated new API, I'll write throwaway test drivers that concentrate on just operating the API so that I understand sequences and dependencies, which are often the most poorly-documented. This lets me understand the API with a fixed, easily repeated scenario.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I would believe you while coding you would know what each section is suppose to return. Been there I too get frustrated because I know what I want to happen. To reach that point I realize how many little pieces need to be implemented. Then realize that some parts could be reused for another section that has yet to be written. I try to test groups of code that work together. All trying to reach the goal of a functioning app. Take breaks after 20-30 minutes. Don't go 2-3 hours STR8.
Wish you the best. Peace,
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Firstly, experience tells you how to develop systems that are testable. However, when push comes to shove, experience allows you to develop cognitive skills that can cope with lining up 5 or 6 ducks in order to get something working. Just so long as nobody interrupts you while you're juggling china ducks.
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Whenever that happens to me, I sit back and ponder, then realize a better design would have avoided the problem.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Entered the living room this morning and I immediately noticed the giant splash of water near the back door.
The rain is seeping through the ceiling through a leakage that seems to be about a meter wide 
It's been raining for about a month, but never had this problem until last night.
This sucks big time! (not quite the expletives I uttered this morning, but let's keep it civil) 
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I know it is not the best answer, but if water only drops from the upper side, be happy.
It could come as a wave through the doors, bringing mood, oil from the crashed cars and many other things (like fecals, dead animals or similars).
We have had the strongest rain week of the last years, the basements of most houses got full of water, a colleague lost his car, another one had to be evacuated... luckily I wasn't directly affected
Damned extreme weather
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Yeah, could be worse, although floods like that don't really happen where I live (well, not since "the disaster" of '53).
We've had the wettest May ever, so it's kind of weird it only started leaking now.
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Luckily no floodings at the Mosel river where we are on holiday at the moment near Traben-Trarbach, also the weather is fine since our arrival last friday.
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Could be worse - if we notice a puddle on the floor somewhere, it's usually one of our cats. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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That was my first thought too.
Not sure how cat going pee pee is worse than a structural defect in your house though 
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Cat pee has a really strong smell, and it's very hard to get rid of. I bought a new set of motorcycle waterproofs, and before I got a chance to use them one of our cats managed to pee on the inside. Even jetwashering didn't help - I binned the set and got a new one ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Sheesh, I thought you were talking about a memory leak in a program!😳
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i'm sure there's an ointment to help with leakage.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Oh! You're talking about the roof. Sorry, I thought it was something ... medical. Yeah, we'll go with that.
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Had something similar happen due to a faulty vent on our roof, and near sidewise rain - I live in a really rainy region.
It flooded the INSIDE of our walls and was running through the doorframe of our coat closet. So that was fun.
I don't envy you, because I've been there. I do wish you the best of luck, and I hope it's an easy fix. It was in our case, relatively because we caught it before it did any expensive damage.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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