What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Joachim Durchholz]

Dimitri Maziuk schrieb:
> That is the basic argument in favour of compile time error checking,
> extended to runtime errors. I don't really care if it's the compiler
> or runtime that tells the luser "your code is broken", as long as it
> makes it clear it's *his* code that's broken, not mine.

You can make runtime errors point to the appropriate code. Just apply 
"programming by contract": explicitly state what preconditions a 
function is requiring of the caller, have it check the preconditions on 
entry (and, ideally, throw the execption in a way that the error is 
reported in the caller's code - not a complicated thing but would 
require changes in the exception machinery of most languages).

Any errors past that point are either a too liberal precondition (i.e. a 
bug in the precondition - but documenting wrong preconditions is still a 
massive bug, even if it's "just" a documentation bug), or a bug in the 
function's code.

Regards,
Jo