Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Nit

[Dustin Sallings]

On Tuesday, Oct 21, 2003, at 19:49 US/Pacific, Tom Lord wrote:

>    People have been talking about Java on this list like it is an
>    examplar of great language design ("mature software") and promoting
>    Java coding conventions that exacerbate the safety problems ("don't
>    just catch and retrhow errors").

	Java is certainly not my favorite language, but I think it's one of 
the better examples of exception handling models.  I mean, you've found 
an interesting hole in their model which certainly has produced a bug 
somewhere.  However, I'd argue that that bug isn't nearly as bad as 
many of the bugs that have been produced from ignoring error conditions 
altogether.  Technically, the error is still handled.

	Worse are the people who go out of their way to ignore exceptions...or 
otherwise cover up problems (pretty much any time someone calls 
e.getMessage() they're hiding a problem).  I think we're a long way 
from creating a language that won't allow people to cover up problems.  
Making it more work to cover up problems than to deal with them is a 
good start, though.

> Agreed.  The context of my burbling about B_fn and friends is simply
> to, slowly and gently, point out that Java is not a safe language
> unless programs are written with a discipline that, according to
> Java-fans on this list, is positively discouraged.  The discouraged
> discipline (or better, changes to the Java language) would all but
> _force_ the use of separate exception classes in this instance.  But
> Java as reportedly practiced, and as the langauge spec enforces,
> respectively encourages and permits fatal mistakes in this area.

	It's not java-fans, it's people who have to work with it every day and 
understand the patterns that produce successful and reliable chunks of 
code.  You're dismissing an entire methodology because you think you've 
found a small hole that might cause an exception to be handled in the 
wrong place.  I disagree and would like to see a concrete example of 
this actually causing a problem.

	You appear to be an exceptional developer in your areas of expertise, 
but you don't seem to have the experience with writing reliable java 
applications that some of the ``java-fans'' have.  Good design is still 
part of the battle, and you might be surprised to find that in a 
well-designed application, your theoretical problem never amounts to 
much.

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pub  1024/3CAE01D5 1994/11/03 Dustin Sallings <address@hidden>
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