What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Marshall]

Joe Marshall wrote:
>
> That's the important point:  I want to run broken code.

I want to make sure I understand. I can think of several things
you might mean by this. It could be:
1) I want to run my program, even though I know parts of it
are broken, because I think there are parts that are not broken
and I want to try them out.
2) I want to run my program, even though it is broken, and I
want to run right up to a broken part and trap there, so I can
use the runtime facilities of the language to inspect what's
going on.


> I want to run
> as much of the working fragments as I can, and I want a `safety net' to
> prevent me from performing undefined operations, but I want the safety
> net to catch me at the *last* possible moment.

This statement is interesting, because the conventional wisdom (at
least as I'm used to hearing it) is that it is best to catch bugs
at the *first* possible moment. But I think maybe we're talking
about different continua here. The last last last possible moment
is after the software has shipped to the customer, and I'm pretty
sure that's not what you mean. I think maybe you mean something
more like 2) above.


Marshall