Who needs exceptions (was Re: Two languages, too similar, competing in the same space.)

[Michael Chermside]

> Unfortunately, disaster cases such as corrupted memory DO happen,
> and, in some kinds of applications, need to be dealt with (by a
> graceful shutdown with good error reporting rather than a crash).

    [...]

> So, while I WAS indeed talking about the far more common case of
> resource exhaustion, the corruption case also needs to be dealt
> with.

    [...]

> In most cases, I've found that a separate "watchdog process" that
> watches over the application process[es] is the best architecture
> to deal with memory-corruption and similar problems. [...]
> 
> That's not unrelated to "preallocate a tad of extra resources" --
> here, the "extra resource" is a process and some memory &c for it
> (the errant process might not be in a condition to fork a NEW
> process for error-reporting at the time of trouble -- better do
> it earlier).  But the extras need to be kept separate, "arm's
> length", from the main operating capital, lest they too be
> consumed in the case of a crash.  Any parallel with prudent
> financial management and supervision is entirely intended; Enron
> doceat...!-)
> 
> 
> Alex


Thanks, Alex... very nice way to think about it.

-- Michael Chermside