Re: another take on hackers and painters

[Zachery Bir <address@hidden>]

On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 04:52 PM, Robby Findler wrote:

> At Wed, 21 May 2003 15:44:01 -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote:
>> Which, I expect, will bring the discussion to something of a halt. I
>> don't see it as a general problem. In those circumstances where it
>> is, I use a language that doesn't do it.
>
> Wonderful -- error checking is not a general problem. Lets just make up
> results for strange situations. Trying index outside the bounds of the
> array? No problem, just return some random bits. Trying to pop an empty
> stack? No problem, we'll just guess you probably wanted 0 (or maybe, on
> Tuesday's, for variety, we'll return the null pointer or the empty list
> or false).
>
> In fact, lets get rid of all errors in programs. Up with the DWIM
> instruction! Down with reliability!

I'm guessing that 'it' is not error checking, but a lack of static 
typing and strong type protection. I forget if this has been brought up 
here, but Robert Martin had a recent thought on dynamic languages + 
unit testing vs. traditional static type safety.

   <http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4639>

Zac