Lies in education [was Re: The "loop and a half"]

[bartc]

On 13/10/2017 16:33, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Oct 2017 01:30 am, Chris Angelico wrote:
> 
>>> For a novice, seeing 'Segmentation fault (core dumped)' is better?
>>
>> Better than silently doing nothing? YES. Absolutely it is.
> 
> Chris, you forget that for Bart, his user-base is only himself. If he programs
> his home-made system to silently ignore writes to write-protected memory,
> that counts as the "...unless explicitly silenced" part of "Errors should
> never pass silently...". If that means his software is riddled with bugs, it
> will affect only himself, and no novices will be harmed.

You're making light of a scheme that was extremely effective in a 
computer system with otherwise unprotected memory, that could write 
anywhere, including over all the code and over the OS.

Without that write protection, what would have happened? Either it would 
go completely haywire, or hang, or could subtly change resident programs 
in dangerous ways.

Or I could put that switch in then I could be CERTAIN that essential 
programs and data were untouched no matter what happened.

So if it worked well then without needing to abort and report a message, 
why can't a scheme like that work now?

BTW, when you're developing a new bit of hardware or software, and 
you're not part of team, then the user-base is normally just yourself. 
Nothing wrong with that, but you seem to like belittling people with 
such comments. What was the userbase when GvR started Python?

-- 
Bartc