[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Allow compilers to reject obvious violations

[Pascal Costanza]

On 26 Feb 2007, at 09:11, Per Bothner wrote:

> Jon Wilson wrote:
>> I would prefer a compiler not to complain about bugs I am already  
>> plenty aware of.  A bug-catching feature is only useful when it  
>> catches something new and unknown.  If I have to do extra work in  
>> order to do some quick and dirty testing, then the compiler's bug  
>> catching features have gotten in the way.  I think that this is  
>> Arthur's POV.  Perhaps you understand it better now.
>
> I understand it, but it seems an amateurish way of working.
> If you have a bug you're plenty aware of, it's almost always easy to
> fix it at least to the extent of shutting up the compiler.  After all,
> people do that every day in C and C++.

The bug that the compiler complains about might be in a part of the  
program that you're currently not interested in and that you do not  
intend to execute for the time being. If the compiler forces you to  
fix that bug first before you can do anything else, and you possibly  
fix it by adding some bogus code just to get rid of the compiler  
message, this not only disrupts your workflow but actively forces you  
to make your code worse than it was before. (Without the bogus  
workaround, the code would issue an exception in the future, but with  
the workaround, it may not, and overall, this makes the job to  
actually get your code right a lot harder.)

A language specification shouldn't make any assumptions about the  
software development "methodology" that I want to use. This should  
rather be left as a quality feature of concrete implementations.

See also http://p-cos.net/documents/dynatype.pdf

Also note that the more advanced IDEs for languages like C++, Java,  
and so on, do add features to execute your code even though the  
compiler complains about it. It would be a shame if Scheme were to  
fall behind in this regard.


Pascal

-- 
Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc at p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab
Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium