TITLE: Pain and Shame
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 12, 2019  3:57 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 Today's lecture notes for my course include a link to
 <A HREF="https://twitter.com/KentBeck">
    @KentBeck</A>'s
 <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/notes/1012061842160013/">
    article on Prune</A>,
 which I still enjoy.

 The line that merits its link in today's session is:
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 We wrote an ugly, fragile state machine for our typeahead,
 which quickly became a source of pain and shame.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

 My students will soon likely experience those emotions about
 the state machines; they are building for lexers for their
 semester-long compiler project.  I reassure them: These
 emotions are normal for programmers.
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