From: Alexey Verkhovsky <alex@...>
Date: 2004-07-18T09:43:18+09:00
Subject: Re: [NUBY] Ruby Way code for shuffling an array doesn't behave as	expected

On Sun, 2004-07-18 at 03:04, Mark Hubbart wrote:
> I'm not sure that an exception would be The Right Thing
A smilie was inadvertently omitted in my earlier post. It should have
said "The Right Thing (TM) :)"

:)

Life is full of compromises, and on the issue of what to do with stale
iterators, there are at least three choices:

1. Nothing (fast and dangerous)
2. Iterate over a copy (safe and slow)
3. Iterate over the original, but detect stale iterators (the middle
way, much safer than 1 and somewhat faster than 2).

Each of the three choices has pros and cons.

All I'm saying is that in my personal experience Java's
ConcurrentModificationException has prevented or exposed many bugs that
otherwise would be subtle and probably very costly affairs. Which is why
I like it. 

But then, the most important difference between Ruby and Java is that
the former lets you do anything, and that includes shooting yourself in
the foot, too. The latter, meantime, does not believe that you REALLY
know what you are doing. :)

Best regards,
Alex