Antoon Pardon wrote: > A language where variable have to be declared before use, would allow > to give all misspelled (undeclared) variables in on go, instead of > just crashing each time one is encounterd.
Wrong. It would catch at compile-time those misspellings which do not happen to coincide with another declared variable. It would give the programmer a false sense of security since they 'know' all their misspellings are caught by the compiler. It would not be a substitute for run-time testing. Moreover, it adds a burden on the programmer who has to write all those declarations, and worse it adds a burden on everyone reading the code who has more lines to read before understanding the code. Also there is increased overhead when maintaining the code as all those declarations have to be kept in line as the code changes over time. It's a trade-off: there is a potential advantage, but lots of disadvantages. I believe that the disadvantages outweight the possible benefit. Fortunately there are plenty of languages to choose from out there, so those who disagree with me are free to use a language which does insist on declarations. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
