Exception as the primary error handling mechanism?

[r0g]

Chris Rebert wrote:
> <much snippage>
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 1:07 AM, r0g <aioe.org at technicalbloke.com> wrote:
>> Lie Ryan wrote:
>>> I have been looking at Haskell recently and the way the pure functional
>>> language handled exceptions and I/O gives me a new distinct "insight"
>>> that exceptions can be thought of as a special return value that is
>>> implicitly wrapped and unwrapped up the call stack until it is
>>> explicitly handled.
>> Yes there's some very interesting paradigms coming out of functional
>> programming but, unless you're a maths major, functional languages are a
>> long way off being productivity tools! Elegant: yes, provable: maybe,
>> practical for everyday coding: not by a long shot!
> 
> Methinks the authors of Real World Haskell (excellent read btw) have a
> bone to pick with you.
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris
> --
> http://blog.rebertia.com


LOL, it seems things have come a long way since ML! I'm impressed how
many useful libraries Haskell has, and that they've included
IF-THEN-ELSE in the syntax! :) For all its advantages I still think you
need to be fundamentally cleverer to write the same programs in a
functional language than an old fashioned "English like" language.

Maybe I'm just mistrusting of the new school though and you'll see me on
comp.lang.haskell in a few years having to eat my own monads!

Roger.