From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-11-07T21:32:10+09:00
Subject: Re: programming best practices

Lyndon Samson wrote:
> On 11/7/05, Robert Klemme <bob.news@gmx.net> wrote:
>> swille wrote:
>>>> But the way you've written it, rc is always false.  Did you mean
>>>> true in the first line? :-)
>>>>
>>>> Also, it seems a little bit like you've got two error-reporting
>>>> systems going on.  Maybe you could combine them:
>>>>
>>>>    def login
>>>>      perform action
>>>>    end
>>>>
>>>>    begin
>>>>      login
>>>>    rescue
>>>>      ...
>>>>    end
>>>>
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ah, yes, that was a typo.  My example possibly wasn't the
>>> greatest... I couldn't think of exactly when I had used it last in
>>> Ruby.  It's actually something I've been using in Java quite a bit
>>> because I've been writing interfaces into JavaScript and there's no
>>> way (in JavaScript) to handle the exceptions from Java, so I use a
>>> boolean return value.  I decided at some point that I really like
>>> the aesthetics of it.  After a colleague questioned that behavior in
>>> another context though, I thought twice about whether it was a good
>>> idea.  Basically, I suggested he use a boolean return value to a
>>> method and he said something to the effect that it would be more
>>> proper to return int-based return codes because "some_method true?"
>>> didn't sound right.  I wondered if maybe I was going to regret not
>>> going to college :O)
>>
>> <soapbox>
>> IMHO using int's as return values is as bad as using boolean return
>> values in a language that has exceptions.  Exceptions are a far more
>> elegant way of handling errors and also often code will be shorter
>> and cleaner.  One of the reasons for this is that you can throw an
>> exception somewhere deep down in an application or lib and catch it
>> several layers above - at the
>
> Well if you were really against Exceptions you could allways use
> continuations to do this more elegantly than nested returns.

I'd be curious how an exception equivalent behavior with continuations
would look like.  ATM I have the impression that it'll be far more
complex...

Kind regards

    robert