Back January 2006, I posted a neat trick to get the address of an object. This was on a mailing list full of people who knew what we were doing. We understood that these were hacks and that they shouldn’t be used in actual software.

However, some people were still concerned:

I’m also worried that you guys will write libraries based on this technique, understanding the risk, but will then release them for the use of other RB users, who might not know what they’re getting into.

Mars Saxman

Sadly, this is exactly what’s happened. Someone has taken this trick and used it a library they released. Now everyone who uses that library is relying on this hack never to break.

It’s even worse because the developer of that library didn’t even need this hack. There are better, legal ways to do this. The only reason I can see that he uses the hack is to cut corners.

Now, if upgrading to a new version of REALbasic breaks everyone’s software that uses this hack… who’s going to get blamed? Probably REAL Software and not the library author.

Anyways, the moral of the story is to use hacks responsibly.