On 11/23/05, Erik de Castro Lopo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > While I agree wholeheartedly that tests are necessay, I'm curious > why you are advocating writing Python tests to find bugs at run time > that say an Ocaml compiler will find for free at compile time. >
While I would agree that catching any bugs asap is a good thing, I find that typos and the like are not the problems that are causing me most grief (crappy logic, crappy requirements, not enough time, other developers writing crappy code, etc are more likely to cause me problems). Python works for me because: a) i (and others) write less code because the language is very expressive. therefore less bugs b) i (and others) write less code because there are heaps of modules out there to do many of the things I need to do (and so many of them come as part of the standard library). therefore less bugs c) i write code and it tends to work first or second go (which says way more about python than it does about my coding ability). I don't have to fight the language, and don't often think "why did they do it that way?" d) the code tends to be easy to read (both my code and the code in standard modules etc.) e) i don't have to look up the documentation each time I try something slightly new (I can keep a large chunk of the language in my head or I can work it out by playing around in the interpreter for a few minutes) f) actually I'll mention the interpreter again, it seems such a simple thing but the number of times I've not known how to use a module but worked it out in the interpreter using a combination of "dir", "help" and "__doc__" in a short period of time makes it worth mentioning as a point on it's own Erik, I've never used ocaml (and know very little about it). Would you be able to evaluate it against some of the points I've raised above, particularly in comparison to python (I'm assuming you've used python based on your criticism)? (I'm not suggesting my criteria are the only ones that matter, different experience, different projects, different environments etc might make other things more or less important, they are criteria that are relevant to me however) Cheers.....Steve -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
