int/long unification hides bugs

[Cliff Wells]

On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 20:37 -0700, kartik wrote:
> Istvan Albert <ialbert at mailblocks.com> wrote in message news:<Hoydnaa6uYCfjuDcRVn-gA at giganews.com>...
> > kartik wrote:
> > 
> > > there seems to be a serious problem with allowing numbers to grow in a
> > > nearly unbounded manner, as int/long unification does: it hides bugs.
> > 
> > No it does not.
> > 
> > Just because a runaway program stops sooner by hitting the
> > integer limit it does not mean that this having this limit
> > is a validation method.
> 
> i didn't say it is. all i say is that it catches bugs - & that's
> valuable.

You did say it is.  And then you said it again right there.

> once again, i'm not relying on the integer limit to catch bugs, but
> i'd much rather have bugs exposed by an overflow exception 

Again that is using the integer limit to catch bugs. Repeated self-
contradiction does little to bolster your argument.

> > If you are worried about some numbers growing too much, then
> > check them yourself, you'll get much better results that way.
> 
> maybe, why not use an automated test built-in 2 the language? i get it
> 4 free.

Because, strangely enough, most people want limitations *removed* from
the language, not added to it.  If you are looking for a language with
arbitrary limits then I think Python isn't quite right for you.

-- 
Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at comcast.net>