OT Re: Newbie... Strict Compilation mode

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Following this thread has pushed another one of my buttons and I  
cannot resist getting on my soap-box and inserting my two-bits.

We have "all" become accustomed to protecting ourselves from  
ourselves. To the point where some of us pass laws requiring that  
everyone protect themselves. I'm talking about INSURANCE. The best  
"insurance" against having anything happen is an alert and active  
mind.  Insurance merely puts us to sleep; allowing us to be less than  
vigilant and knowledgeable within all aspects of our lives. Not  
declaring vars merely promotes sloppiness and, eventually, stupidity.  
The President is going to spend enormous sums of money promoting  
Health Insurance, when the best insurance is almost free; preventive  
medicine which we have neglected for decades. We just need to be  
diligent about all things. Education, eduction, education!!!!!!!!

Joe Wilkins

  On May 9, 2009, at 8:47 PM, Mark Wieder wrote:

> 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