Why self?

[Tim Hammerquist]

Alex Martelli graced us by uttering:
> Tim Hammerquist wrote:
>         ...[snipped lots of intense agreements]...
>> Trusting a language structure to protect against malicious or
>> simply incompetent users is bad design, and is likely to inhibit
>> flexibility.
> 
> Not too sure I agree fully with THIS point.

I don't cling to it zealously, either.  It's mostly a wordy way of
saying: clean-compile != correct-program.  IOW, you can't determine
program quality by the number of errors it generates. =)

[ snip ]
> Regarding _accidental_ misuse, i.e., errors, having the compiler do
> more checks does help a bit -- if nothing else, you learn about such
> errors a few seconds earlier, and that must be worth SOMEthing (as
> long as it doesn't lull you into a false belief that therefore you
> don't need code inspections and unittests -- of course you do, no
> compiler will catch a typo such as + where you meant -, and that can
> be a disaster!-).

Agreed.  Syntax checking and similar measures go farthest in catching
simple mistakes, such as Perl's 'use strict' pragma.  This is what they
were intended for, right?  But similar to above, what the program does
and what the programmer means are all too often different. =)

[ snipped thoughtful analysis ]

> Alex

I think I'm vaguely on the same page with you.  But whether I can put
the thoughts in my head clearly onto paper, er, rather, into words, is
another matter entirely.  =)

Tim Hammerquist
-- 
> (It's sorta like sed, but not.  It's sorta like awk, but not.  etc.)
Guilty as charged.  Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.
    -- Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627 at netlabs.com>