"False exceptions?" (was Re: theme of the week: tools

[Dan Perl]

"Steve Holden" <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote in message 
news:4157FD67.80404 at holdenweb.com...
> Dan Perl wrote:
>
>> Yes, that's what I was talking about.  Thanks, Carlos, for explaining it. 
>> I actually should have said false detection of exceptions or wrong 
>> detection of exceptions.  I don't remember what Wingware are calling it. 
>> Actually, the way they were qualifying it was something like "if you do 
>> not see this exception when running the script outside the IDE, then you 
>> should probably flag it to be ignored".  And they are giving a list of 
>> builtin modules where those exceptions are usually "falsely" detected.
>>
> As a recent convert to Wing I think you aren't giving them enough credit: 
> remember, this only happens in the 2.0 BETA product (or, if it also 
> happens in earlier versions, they are definitely planning to minimize the 
> effects in the production version).

According to the documentation this was happening in much earlier, 
production, versions.  You are saying "they are definitely planning to 
minimize the effects in the production version".  Can you please qualify 
that?  Minimize how?  What does "minimizing the effects" mean anyway?

>> I didn't try to figure out what their exception detection mechanism is 
>> and why they have this problem.  I just uninstalled the IDE.  So 10 days 
>> for the trial was more than enough after all. ;-)  I think I had it 
>> installed for about 2 days.  I can tolerate a bug and I wouldn't be so 
>> riled up, but what got me was the marketing spin and how they were just 
>> excusing the bug, like they would never fix it.
>>
> Well, I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that before they go into 
> production they plan to add a standard list of such exceptions for the 
> various Python versions, so that the standard libraries are far less 
> troublesome in this respect.

A "standard" list?  I don't see what's "standard" about that.  And the 
"standard libraries" are not "troublesome", the IDE is.  On the other hand, 
I suppose that this would be an "effect minimization".  I don't know what 
their plans are, but they could include a list of all the possible false 
positives and automatically ignore them.  Forgive me, but that is a hack and 
I will not have any respect for that.

You are using the same kind of marketing spin speak that Wingware is using. 
I can understand that you like the tool and you feel you have to defend it. 
But I think this is the wrong way to do it, both for you and for Wingware.

I probably shouldn't get so worked up about it.  To be fair, since I tried 
the tool I have discovered that Wing IDE also has the option to disable that 
behavior and to debug in a mode where unhandled exceptions are just treated 
like a normal run would treat them.

> Plus, IIRC, all you have to do is check an "ignore this exception" box to 
> have a specific exception ignored everafter, which didn't seem like a huge 
> deal to me.

It's just too bad I don't have a checkbox for "Ignore marketing spin at this 
location".

Dan