Deliberate Errors- a theory

Davidc316

So far, since getting in PHP I've purchased two books and I've also tried out a very large PHP program that was published in an Internet magazine.

Both books came with a CD ROM, and I've noticed that some of the larger program examples on both books are littered with errors. Sure enough, the shopping cart program that I got from this magazine also has errors all over the place.

Anyway, the thing is... all of these errors are really silly errors that don't affect the fundamental structure or design of the programs. For example, one of my books has a program for building an online catalogue. It talks you through this example and it also has the thing on a CD ROM. But if you take a closer look on the CD ROM, there are daft mistakes everywhere. For example, the file names for some functions have been changed ever so slightly. Or, the book gives one .inc file a slightly different name from the file of the CD.

These are all very trivial problems and anyone working their way through these books would pick up on them straight away. I wonder... Do you think the authors put these errors in on purpose?????

I mean, think about how expensive some good shopping cart software can be compaired to how relatively inexpensive some of these PHP books are.

Do you think it's possible that all these errors have been put in there to stop people from cheating and just copying the programs straight from the CD ROM? One thing's for sure, if you copy these programs from the CD ROMs and try to run them, they will not work at all because of the errors.

-David

PS- I've checked out lots of other book reviews in Amazon.com and apparently lots of other PHP books are plagued with typing errors too.

dalecosp

Well, PHP writers are often 'NIX users, and 'NIX users are known as lazy typists. Consider 'ls'; 'rm'; 'ln'; ''lp' or 'lpr'; 'man'; 'cmp'; 'diff'; and we could go on all day... so, it's pretty likely with this in their backgrounds, and the publishers' brain-to-street schedule, that a few mistakes are made. And besides, who uses human editors any more? aspell or somesuch, mebbbe. Or, perhaps everyone's just into Broken Source, a movement which began right here in the Echo lounge..... 😃 😃

On a slightly more serious note; I've uploaded stuff from Welling/Thomson, popped a reg_globals fix into .htaccess, and examined working scripts right there on the www....

I hope, of course, that they've evolved into something more useful as I've played around with their code.....

BuzzLY

I don't think that is done on purpose. I do know that some book publishers will do that to prevent plagiarism, but when you get code from a book like that, they WANT you to use the code on your site. I would be very surprised if I found that they did that. I will probably know the answer to that in a few months, however. I will let you know then 🙂

jayant

well not all, but yes many out there.

books that are considered as bibles of programming (for a particular lang.) have fewer errors in the code.

there maybe different reason for the errors. from preventing plagiarism to simple carelessness on part of author and the publisher

Elizabeth

I think it's just a matter of poor attention to detail, more than anything else. Especially in today's world of spell and grammar checkers, automatic formatting, etc. - people tend to get lazy and under pressure to perform. Although there are proofreaders out there who are supposed to be the last catch-all for errors, with a collaboration book especially- there are so many loose ends to be tied up and so many people involved in the mix that it's actually not surprising that some of these errors slip through the mix.

Just my opinion

-Elizabeth

Jedi_Legend

Well, that's why I believe you should learn the concepts the examples show and not use the code. Of course, it is useful to run the code to see the output.

I don't own any programming books, so I don't know how bad of a problem these errors really are.

laserlight

I would blame it on the proofreaders 😛

Still, errors in examples can be very frustrating to newbies who have no idea how to debug them.

Elizabeth

Yes, I can remember being a n00b and getting frustrated as to why something that should be working, wasn't. However- in a way- it helped me figure out what was going on instead of just taking it for face value. It made me look one step deeper and REALLY understand what they were doing... and it was an even better feeling when I finally got it to work, instead of just typing it in, and letting it run.

-Elizabeth

planetsim

Ive never had a programming book before, but my theory is they have the errors there so newbies will learn basic concepts on finding errors, and trying to learn how to fix them.

Probably not a great theory, but from what im hearing its what it sounds like.

dalecosp

Hmmmm, kinda like "Where's Waldo?" in this script, eh? 😃 😃

planetsim

My kiddy yrs are all coming back to me now..

i remember getting the books.. n say it was my reading 4 the week..

Davidc316

Hmmmmmm.

Well, I thank you for the replies but I stand by my original post.

I mean, I admit to being a pretty sloppy guy, but if I was writing a book and burning a CD of the scripts, there's NO WAY I'd let those kind of daft mistakes get through the net. I mean, it would only take 3 seconds for them to simply TEST the scripts that they're printing.

All in all, I think protecting copyright can be excused, but complete blind sloppyness is unforgivable folly for any semi serious author or publisher.