Newbie... Strict Compilation mode

[Mark Wieder]

Jacque-

Saturday, May 9, 2009, 6:01:53 PM, you wrote:

Ah... I *knew* this would push Jacque's buttons... <g>

> 1. The main strength of xtalk is that you do not have to declare or type
> variables. Sticking them up there at the top of every handler removes
> one of the main advantages of using Rev in the first place.

I seriously take issue with that being "the main strength" of xtalk.

> 5. And finally, what's wrong with being lazy? :) The smart programmer
> finds the easiest way to do things. That's what Rev is all about.

Laziness is one of the big reasons I *do* declare my variables. If the
compiler is smart enough to catch all kinds of errors for me, why
should I go through all the debugging work at runtime? I believe in
letting the computer do the hard work for me, otherwise I might as
well just be coding the cpu's opcodes by hand.

> None of these things is outweighed for me by the fact that explicitVars
> might catch a few typos. The engine catches most of those anyway and
> throws an error.

> Back to today's response:

> The debugger pinpoints the exact source of the misspelling if it 
> happens; how hard is that? I'm a pretty good typist though, so I don't
> get caught out too often. I suppose if you are really as bad a typist as
> your theoretical example, then yes, you'd want some help. ;)

<puts on a SNL snarl>
 ...Jacque, you ignorant slut...
<returns to reality>
You're missing the point. The purpose of explicitVars is to catch
things that slip by the compiler otherwise. If it's just a simple
misspelling of a keyword the compiler will catch it anyway, as you
pointed out. But explicitVars will let you know if you've mistyped a
variable name when the "friendly" compiler would helpfully generate a
new variable instead of using the one you intended. And it will help
when your fingers forget to place a space after "the" and instead of
the variableNames ending up in a variable you end up with empty.

> I once took over a project from someone who used explicit variables. I
> stripped out all the declarations so I could read the scripts 
> comfortably. The stack size was cut in half (!). No lie. There were all
> kinds of handlers in there with something like 8 lines of declarations
> and three lines of actual script. Waste of time and space.

I recognize hyperbole when I see it, but nonetheless I don't think you
can have 8 lines of declarations and three lines of actual script (and
of course someone will post some code that proves me wrong). If you
come across a handler like this then you have at least five lines of
declarations that are not being used. And then you're absolutely right
to strip them out <g>.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net