exceptions

[Jacek Generowicz]

Scott David Daniels <Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org> writes:

> Calvin Spealman wrote:
> > ...
> > Have to admit tho, a continue feature might be useful. Some languages have
> > this, don't they? The thing is, Where exactly to continue? Should you retry
> > whatever raised the exception, continue just after it, at the beginning of
> > that line, or what?
> >
> 
> See this older thread:
>    <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3edd6118%241%40nntp0.pdx.net>
> 
> Xerox's experience (in deliberately removing the "continue from
> exception" language feature) I found very instructive.

Funny, Common Lisp (and some of its ancestors) allows you to "fiddle
things and and return as well as even return from the exception", and
people who write industrial strength applications is Common Lisp
repeatedly state that this feature allows them to write software which
is much more robust than any they would otherwise be able to
create. Some go as far as considering any language without this
feature to be fundamentally flawed. I have never heard anyone identify
this feature as a source of bugs.

So I am tempted to conclude that the Mesa implementation was flawed
... or maybe it was just the users who were flawed. The concept itself
seems to have proven its worth over time.