On 2010-10-01, Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote: > Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> writes: >> On 2010-10-01, Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote: >>> compiler passes wrong type wrong result fails at run-time >>> (the programmer (with exception >>> spends hours explaining this is >>> finding the the wrong type) >>> problem) > >> I have no clue what exact scenario you're talking about here. I've never >> seen a bug that could plausibly be described as "compiler passes wrong >> type" which wasn't picked up quickly by running with more warnings enabled.
> This is the scenario discussed in this thread, a long is passed to > maximum without a compiler warning. The compiler didn't pass the wrong type, the user did. >> And on the other end of things, it is not always obvious or straightforward >> to figure out *why* the dynamic language has ended up with something of the >> wrong type, or what's wrong with that type. > It is on the contrary rather obvious or easily discoverable, looking at > the backtrace, and inspecting the data structures referenced from it. This is a fascinating assertion, but it is slightly marred by not actually being generally true. It's often the case that it's pretty obvious, but sometimes it's not so obvious -- it can take quite a bit of doing to figure out how or where some hunk of a data structure got set up wrong. It's very easy to find the call where a nil was passed to something expecting some kind of integer; it's sometimes not so easy to find the completely unrelated hunk of code which modified the data structure half an hour earlier. -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated! I am not speaking for my employer, although they do rent some of my opinions. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
