Efficient programmers do the work of mental simulations and hand calculations because they know that such measures help them find errors. Inefficient programmers tend to experiment randomly until they find a combination that seems to work. If a loop isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, the inefficient programmer changes the < sign to a <= sign. If that fails, the inefficient programmer changes the loop index by adding or subtracting 1. Eventually the programmer using this approach might stumble onto the right combination or simply replace the original error with a more subtle one. Even if
...more
