Identifying exceptions that can be raised

[Uche Ogbuji]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<cnso32$k1f$1 at utornnr1pp.grouptelecom.net>...
> Roy Smith wrote:
> > Computer Science is not an experimental science.  
> 
> Again, you've said nothing that in any way justifies this statement.
> 
> I'm not saying CS _is_ an experimental science, but I think
> I would say that your implied statement that one should *never*
> do this is fundamentally flawed.
> 
> Ultimately, however, this is a silly argument, because neither
> you nor I write code solely in the manner I described, nor
> in the manner you appear to be recommending (i.e. going exclusively
> based on the documentation), so I'm not even sure why you
> wrote...

Personally, I shared Mr. Smith's reaction to your posting.  I've seen
a lot of claims of the magical fairy dust of test-first programming
(an idea whose basic soundness I agree with), but the idea that such
prophetic pre-testing is a sounder way of learning an API properly
than reading the documentation tops them all.

I believe now your claims that you didn't mean anything so radical,
but you can hardly blame Mr. Smith from reading what you wrote,
originally and coming to the natural conclusion from comprehension of
your prose.  The reason why he wrote is to make it clear to anyone
else who respects you as an intelligent commentator on Python
programming (this was a thread started by a noob question, after all)
that in reality that reading the documentation should generally be the
first step in comprehending code.  I think he achieved this aim by
pointing out that the very example you trumpeted proved the overriding
value of documentation.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
A hands-on introduction to ISO Schematron -
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-xschematron-i.html
Schematron abstract patterns -
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stron.html
Wrestling HTML (using Python) -
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/09/08/pyxml.html
XML's growing pains - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10196
XMLOpen and more XML Hacks -
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think27.html
A survey of XML standards -
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stand4/