From: Alexey Verkhovsky <alex@...>
Date: 2004-08-28T10:25:43+09:00
Subject: Typos (Was: performance comparison)

On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 02:59, Lothar Scholz wrote:
> Hello Alexey,

> I doubt that very much typos that make it into compiled code are wrong
> identifiers. 
Not in static languages. But it is by far the most common mistake I make
when writing in Ruby.

> And typos in identifiers normally don't get there way in
> a runnable program.
One hopes so. Thanks heaven (and Nathaniel Talbott) for test/unit.

> This the responsibility of the parser/compiler not the IDE
> (the IDE has no AI for this, it's just a few lines of code to do this).
Oh, thanks for the enlightenment :)
It is the IDE that tells to parser/compiler what I just typed, and
highlights the errors under my cursor though. Both decent Java IDEs that
I know of apparently use their own syntax parsers (incremental and
tightly coupled to IDE's own project model). Have a look at Eclipse code
- it even has its own Java compiler; the part about continuous parsing
is a tad more than "just a few lines", too.

> Thats why i'm trying to only use Eiffel. Still much better when it
> comes to avoid errors. For example overwritting methods by accident.
What are such "belts and braces" programmers as the two of us doing on
ruby-talk? :) 

Seriously though, even after becoming familiar with the syntax and
standard classes to the point where I mostly don't have to think about
them, I still find myself making notably more mistakes in Ruby than in
Java. Hacking out a small script using standard APIs is a bliss, but
adding 15 lines of unit test and 15 lines of code that makes it pass to
an existing project normally takes me 2-3 edit/test/debug cycles just to
get past the typos. Quick as these cycles are, they break my flow.
Simple refactorings (like "rename method") are also painful in the same
way. 

I wonder if it's just another stage of the learning curve, or that's how
programming in dynamic language normally feels, or maybe I am doing
something wrong (?)

Alex