> On Aug 22, 2016, at 7:50 PM, Alex Miller <a...@puredanger.com> wrote:
> You've complained in other channels about the "learning to read" error > messages part and I think you've taken it entirely the wrong way or maybe I > just disagree. There are benefits from reporting errors in a generic, > consistent way. […] Do there exist examples of what is desired for error messages in 1.9-final? Not promises, but a “this is what we’re shooting for”? What would you all like the specific error messages complained about in this thread to look like? Colin Fleming wrote: "The error message produced by the code I demoed at the conj last year would be: Unexpected symbol 'require' at <exact error location> while parsing namespace clauses. Expected :refer-clojure, :require, :use, :import, :load or :gen-class.” Is that the goal? I fear that the goal is that it should be my job to understand "(cat :attr-map (? map?) :clauses :clojure.core.specs/ns-clauses)”. For what little it’s worth, I consider that completely unacceptable. > - Getting the error data (specifically the explain-data output) to be both > sufficient and generically useful is the first priority. I think at this > point that's pretty close and unlikely to change significantly. My bias here is that I come from the learned-from-bitter-experience tradition that believes it’s very risky to (1) get the infrastructure right, and then (2) pop down the user-visible features on top of it. Very often, the infrastructure turns out to be a poor match for the actual needs of the features. But, since (1) is already done, the features - and consequently the users - suffer. Please understand I’m not being insulting when I say that everyone has weaknesses and blind spots, even undoubted geniuses. In Clojure, error messages and documentation (especially doc strings) have long been glaring weaknesses. So I am wishing to be helpful when I counsel *quickly* getting to worked examples of output, especially output that novices are likely to encounter. And exposing those messages to typical users, ones who are not familiar with core.spec. That seems prudent. I believe strongly enough in good error messages that I would be willing to do some of the scut work, if needed. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
