Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Nit

[Dustin Sallings]

On Tuesday, Oct 21, 2003, at 23:13 US/Pacific, Andrew Suffield wrote:

> >         0.0: false
>
> This evaluates to the number 0, and is therefore false.
>
> >         "0": false
>
> This evaluates to the number 0, and is therefore false.
>
> >         "0.0": true (huh?)
>
> This evaluates to the string "0.0", which is not the number 0 or the
> string "", and is therefore true.
>
> This is really trivial stuff. It's in chapter 1 of the camel. You
> really should have known it, especially that last one (which is a
> FAQ).

	TMTOF.  It's an inconsistency.  Since perl has no number types, it's 
unclear when stuff is considered what.  "0.0" == 0 is true, and 0 is 
considered false, and 0.0 is considered false, but "0.0" is not 
considered false.

        How did we get way over here?

> > > And nor was it intended to. The reason for its existance is pretty
> > > obvious to me, since I've spent more than 30 seconds (nearly five
> > > minutes, I'd estimate) thinking about how to go about making all the
> > > primitives throw exceptions on error.
> >
> >         This is the part I don't get.  Why would it not be intended to do
> >         what it's documented to do?
>
> Again, it is not documented as doing this.

	That's clearly a perspective thing.  ``replace functions with 
equivalents which succeed or die.''

> >         This is another example about how I'm a bad perl programmer because
> >         I don't know some secret knowledge and instead go by what's in the
> > documentation.
>
> No single text will convey all the things you need to know about any
> given subject. There are several good books about perl that will get
> you started, notably including the camel.

	Surely the authoritative online documentation should be considered 
trustworthy.  It makes no suggestion that it is not the appropriate 
tool for the job.  It seems to do quite the opposite, to me.

> I think you mean "It takes work not to pass on exceptions from things
> you call". It takes no work at all not to throw any of your own.

	I'd have to think about that one.  If you find yourself in a bad 
state, it can be a lot more difficult to avoid throwing an exception 
than to just throw one.

> >         Probably the #1 feature of java is the vast availability of good
> > libraries, though.
>
> Funny how there's somebody willing to say that about every language,
> and at least as many people stating the opposite as the reason why
> they can't afford to use the language in question.

	Saying that the best feature of a language is the amount of code 
written for it is different from saying it should be used because of 
this.  Perl also has a very large library suite, but I'll grow tomatoes 
for food before trying to deal with a large perl project again.

> Java is plagued with bad programmers, more so than most
> languages. Only php, perl and C++ have comparable numbers of bad
> programmers using them (and perl and C++ get out here because creating
> libraries is moderately difficult, so the bad programmers don't do it
> as much as they otherwise would). As a result it has a huge range of
> lousy libraries.

        I will agree with this.  Popularity certainly has its consequences.

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