From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-10-13T09:01:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Design Philosophies


From: " JamesBritt" <james@jamesbritt.com>


> > > Why not just set your RUBYOPT value to include warnings?
> >
> > ...why not set RUBYOPT to suppress them.
>
> This is an interesting question, analogous to the forced use of white space
> in Python or the absence of pointers in Java.  The philosophy seems to be
> that it's better to force certain behavior for a developer's own good.

Except that we're only talking about warnings here.  They can be ignored.

> If you haven't been using the -w switch all along, Setting RUBYOPT=-w  is
> akin to pulling back your couch after not cleaning for several months.  You
> find all sorts of icky things.  And, as with your couch, you have to wonder
> how much of the ick is actually desirable.
>
> When you see a list of warnings for a given script, how often do you say,
> "Yeah, I know, I *meant* that"? Do people here have programmatic idioms
> that, while producing warnings, are justified?

My experience of C/C++ was that I couldn't possibly write a working program
without taking notice of warnings.  Thus I accepted the received wisdom (in
programming books) to treat warnings as errors.  It's less of an issue with
Ruby, but I think it's a good habit.

So my "idiom" is to modify code so that it doesn't produce warnings.  Of course
I "know" that some warnings are harmless (method/constant redefined), but I
have no objection to changing the code.

> I'm not fond of restricting programmer choice; there should be enough rope
> to shoot oneself in the foot.  But so long as warnings can easily be turned
> off, what are the arguments for not forcing people to look under the couch
> all the time?  What do you gain by avoiding warnings by default?

You gain more questions to ruby-talk! :)

> James

Gavin