OT Re: Newbie... Strict Compilation mode

[Stephen Cox]

Agreed.

Now must I send bribes to end this "debate"?


On 5/10/09 2:50 AM, "Richmond Mathewson" <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> God may forgive you, but the rest of us will . . .
> 
> love you and cherish you for initiating a useful and
> stimulating discussion!
> 
> And, the moral of the story is: you can be bl**dy-minded like me,
> or you can be bl**dy-minded like somebody else, or (what a luxury)
> you can be bl**dy-minded in you own way.
> 
> To my mind, the 'tolerance' of Runtime Revolution is what makes it
> so much more accessible than most other programming environments.
> 
> Stephen Cox wrote:
>> Well..  God.. Sorry all for starting this. :)
>> 
>> Use what you want. I'll keep it on cause I'm used to that type of
>> environment. Used to declaring variables. And it's in my head.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 5/10/09 1:09 AM, "Joe Lewis Wilkins" <pepetoo at cox.net> wrote:
>> 
>>   
>>> 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
>>>>       
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> 
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