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Re: Python or Perl for a Debian maintainance project?



On Sat, Feb 21, 2004 at 08:52:36PM +0100, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
> Hi, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> 
> >> The whole _point_ of this (part of the) discussion is that in Python,
> >> code that doesn't explicitly test for errors is perfectly OK because the
> >> interpreter does it for you.
> > 
> > I would say that the whole point was that is *not* okay.
> 
> So what's your problem with implicit throw-exception-if-error?

Nothing really. The problem is with not explicitly testing for errors.

> The only other difference is that Python makes it easier to inadvertently
> throw an exception for something that should have been perfectly OK, while
> in Perl/C it's very easy to inadvertently ignore an error you should have
> handled.
> 
> The first kind of bug is _far_ easier to fix, IMHO.

And yet in the real world, it's the kind that gets left unfixed, while
the latter kind does not. Resulting in a lot of code that crashes and
burns for things that really didn't matter. I'd rather have a daemon
silently ignore an error than die for a non-error.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
   `-             -><-          |

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