From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2009-12-23T02:03:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Symbols vs. constants?

On Dec 22, 2009, at 9:02 AM, Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

> James Edward Gray II wrote:
>> 
>> It's interesting to note that what I just described is pretty much 
>> standard operating procedure for Perl programmers now.  You'll be hard 
>> pressed to find modern Perl literature that doesn't show warnings turned 
>> on and avoided in their code.  The same is dramatically less common for 
>> us.  This is the one place I feel their culture is superior to ours.
>> 
> 
> There are two reasons for this.
> * Perl warnings are actually useful.

I agree that Perl's warnings system is superior.  I wish we had the ability to disable specific warnings, as they do.

> * Perl programmers don't tend to test systematically.

Tests are one tool to help you prevent bugs.  There are others, like warnings.

A car has more than one feature that helps keep passengers alive in a crash and that's a good thing.  There's nothing wrong with using every tool at your disposal.

>> The most important aspect to me is libraries though.  If you write a 
>> library that throws warnings, I think we should be able to take your 
>> keyboard away.  It's the whole second-hand smoke thing.  You didn't just 
>> make a bad choice for you but for me too.
> 
> To me, it looks a little unprofessional, but I'm not going to avoid a 
> decent library just because it throws warnings.

Boy, I sure will, if I have a choice.

>> It's also worth noting that it is possible to change a constant without 
>> a warning.  In fact, it's possible to do all of Ruby's dynamic magic 
>> without warnings, so you certainly can avoid them if you desire.
> 
> True.  But why bother?  A warning is not ipso facto a problem.

Now I can tell that you didn't really read my message.  I gave my reasons.

You have your techniques for building robust software, I have mine, and other programmers have theirs.  There's nothing wrong with that of course.

If code throws warnings, it reduces some of my options.  I would rather avoid that when possible.

James Edward Gray II