On Friday, 31 August 2018 at 19:50:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880722
Typical comments:
"`assertAndContinue` crashes in dev and logs an error and keeps
going in prod. Each time we want to verify a runtime
assumption, we decide which type of assert to use. We prefer
`assertAndContinue` (and I push for it in code review),"
"Stopping all executing may not be the correct 'safe state' for
an airplane though!"
"One faction believed you should never intentionally crash the
app"
"One place I worked had a team that was very adamant about not
really having much error checking. Not much of any qc process,
either. Wait for someone to complain about bad data and
respond. Honestly, this worked really well for small,
skunkworks type projects that needed to be nimble."
And on and on. It's unbelievable. The conventional wisdom in
software for how to deal with programming bugs simply does not
exist.
Here's the same topic on Reddit with the same awful ideas:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9bl72d/assertions_in_production_code/
No wonder that DVD players still hang when you insert a DVD
with a scratch on it, and I've had a lot of DVD and Bluray
players over the last 20 years. No wonder that malware is
everywhere.
It's because programming is done completely wrong. All we do is
program like it's 1952 all wrapped up in a nice box and bow tie.
WE should have tools and a compiler design that all work
interconnected with complete graphical interfaces that aren't
based in the text gui world(an IDE is just a fancy text editor).
I'm talking about 3D code representation using graphics so
projects can be navigated visually in a dynamic way and many
other things.
The current programming model is reaching diminishing returns.
Programs cannot get much more complicated because the environment
in which they are written cannot support them(complexity != size).
We have amazing tools available to do amazing things but
programming is still treated like punch cards, just on acid. I'd
like to get totally away from punch cards.
I total rewrite of all aspects of programming should be done(from
"object" files(no more, they are not needed, at least not in the
form they are), the IDE(it should be more like a video game(in
the sense of graphical use) and provide extensive information and
debugging support all at a finger tip away), from the tools, to
the design of applications, etc.
One day we will get there...
