On 26 Feb 2007, at 09:11, Per Bothner wrote:
> Jon Wilson wrote:
>> I would prefer a compiler not to complain about bugs I am already
>> plenty aware of. A bug-catching feature is only useful when it
>> catches something new and unknown. If I have to do extra work in
>> order to do some quick and dirty testing, then the compiler's bug
>> catching features have gotten in the way. I think that this is
>> Arthur's POV. Perhaps you understand it better now.
>
> I understand it, but it seems an amateurish way of working.
> If you have a bug you're plenty aware of, it's almost always easy to
> fix it at least to the extent of shutting up the compiler. After all,
> people do that every day in C and C++.
The bug that the compiler complains about might be in a part of the
program that you're currently not interested in and that you do not
intend to execute for the time being. If the compiler forces you to
fix that bug first before you can do anything else, and you possibly
fix it by adding some bogus code just to get rid of the compiler
message, this not only disrupts your workflow but actively forces you
to make your code worse than it was before. (Without the bogus
workaround, the code would issue an exception in the future, but with
the workaround, it may not, and overall, this makes the job to
actually get your code right a lot harder.)
A language specification shouldn't make any assumptions about the
software development "methodology" that I want to use. This should
rather be left as a quality feature of concrete implementations.
See also
http://p-cos.net/documents/dynatype.pdf
Also note that the more advanced IDEs for languages like C++, Java,
and so on, do add features to execute your code even though the
compiler complains about it. It would be a shame if Scheme were to
fall behind in this regard.
Pascal
--
Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc_at_p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab
Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium
Received on Mon Feb 26 2007 - 03:42:29 UTC