Ary Borenszweig wrote:
Daniel Keep wrote:
Walter Bright wrote:
Daniel Keep wrote:
"But the user will just assign to something useless to get around
that!"
You mean like how everyone wraps every call in try{...}catch(Exception
e){} to shut the damn exceptions up?
They do just that in Java because of the checked-exceptions thing. I
have a reference to Bruce Eckel's essay on it somewhere in this thread.
The observation in the article was it wasn't just moron idiot
programmers doing this. It was the guru programmers doing it, all the
while knowing it was the wrong thing to do. The end result was the
feature actively created the very problems it was designed to prevent.
A NPE is the thermonuclear option of error handling. Your program blows
up, tough luck, try again. Debugging is forensics, just like picking
through a mound of dead bodies and bits of fuselage; if it's come to
that, there's a problem.
It's your leg dropping off from necrosis and the doctor going "gee, I
guess you're sick."
It's the plane smashing into the ground and killing everyone inside, a
specialised team spending a month analysing the wreckage and saying
"well, this screw came loose but BUGGERED if we can work out why."
Then, after several more crashes, someone finally realises that it
didn't come loose, it was never there to begin with. "Oh! THAT'S why
they keep crashing!
"Gee, would've been nice if the plane wouldn't have taken off without
it."
I like your analogies. :)
I also do, but try and picture a plane sophisticated to the point it can
notice missing screws and ask yourself the following question: what is
making sure such a screw detection system works correctly.
That's really just taking a problem and sending it to another team to
solve, at the end of the day, it's still a problem. Besides, explosions
are cool!
