On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 06:05:25PM -0800, Peter Scott wrote:
> Are we still having this discussion? :-)
*sigh* yes.
> I do not think there is hard dividing line between warnings and
> errors. "Unable to establish network connection - saving file to local
> disk" means the program is still running afterwards. The more
> fault-tolerant your program is, the more your errors look like
> warnings. Is that message an error or a warning?
Anything that doesn't kill your program is a warning. The decision as
to whether something should be fatal or not is similar for a program
as for a language. A warning says "this looks wrong, but I'm going to
plow ahead anyway because you might know what you're doing".
> >The result? People either shut them off or mindlessly click [Ok].
> >Nobody** sits there and things "gee, do I really want to throw this
> >out?" Nobody reads software licenses.
>
> Or government warnings on cigarettes.
They put warnings on cigarettes now? ;)
> >Similarly, a wet-behind-the-ears programmer will not give Perl's
> >warnings much credence if their program runs fine despite of them.
> >They will be ignored until such time as they internallized, through
> >error or teaching.
>
> I suppose I'm in an exceptional class then, 'cos whatever language I'm
> using, any warning at any time causes me to stop what I'm doing, and fix
> the cause.
The basic usefulness of warnings is not in question. This is about
the *perception* of their utility. Warnings are only useful if the
user heeds them. The question is, will having them on by default make
the user more or less likely to respond?
There was also eariler discussion that this might encourage people to
cover up large sections of lousy code with a C<no warnings> thus
further burying potential errors and actually worsening the situation.
Some ideas were kicked around to have a way to globally override C<no
warnings>... but it seems like we're right back to having to remember
-w again.
--
Michael G Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl6 Quality Assurance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kwalitee Is Job One
