A Monkey Patch is a way of changing the way that code runs at runtime (as opposed to compile time). It earned its name due to the fact that monkey patching first developed as a somewhat sneaky technique to quickly and easily add contingencies for badly-written code. It was called guerilla patching, which then became gorilla patching, and then monkey patching. Sad but true.
Monkey patching is no longer viewed as bad programming technique. In fact, a lot of programmers now regard it as an essential and useful skill (including my beloved Ruby community, who have brutally misappropriated the term for their own use.
@Saument - I was taught to code to 80 lines at university. Then I started at Shortfuze and was given a widescreen monitor. We code to "whatever you can view in netbeans on a 22 inch monitor". (It was clipped for the screencast - they don't pay me enough to code on a 12 inch monitor ;) )
@pineapple In the old days you used to restart the program (eg moviestorm) to test every change. But monkey-patching lets us see the changes without a restart. Saves us lots of time.
I'm still really disappointed that the button doesn't look like a monkey.
7 comments:
Fascinating. I've never quite understood how the actual process of "debugging" works. Thanks for posting this. I didn't find it boring at all.
I want a monkey patch..what does it do?
A Monkey Patch is a way of changing the way that code runs at runtime (as opposed to compile time). It earned its name due to the fact that monkey patching first developed as a somewhat sneaky technique to quickly and easily add contingencies for badly-written code. It was called guerilla patching, which then became gorilla patching, and then monkey patching. Sad but true.
Monkey patching is no longer viewed as bad programming technique. In fact, a lot of programmers now regard it as an essential and useful skill (including my beloved Ruby community, who have brutally misappropriated the term for their own use.
Arrgh! I know nobody prints code out on paper any more, but it still drives me nuts when lines go beyond that print margin line! :^)
Fun stuff. Thanks for this blog.
@Saument - I was taught to code to 80 lines at university. Then I started at Shortfuze and was given a widescreen monitor. We code to "whatever you can view in netbeans on a 22 inch monitor". (It was clipped for the screencast - they don't pay me enough to code on a 12 inch monitor ;) )
@pineapple In the old days you used to restart the program (eg moviestorm) to test every change. But monkey-patching lets us see the changes without a restart. Saves us lots of time.
I'm still really disappointed that the button doesn't look like a monkey.
Fix verified!
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