On Saturday, 31 January 2026 at 16:11:15 UTC, kdevel wrote:
Sorry for not being able to fetch the bibliographically correct
references to that 20+ year old paper [1] by Jim Shore in IEEE
Software. First page second column:
"In contrast, a program that fails fast will throw an
exception"
[1] Jim Shore: Fail Fast
https://martinfowler.com/ieeeSoftware/failFast.pdf
From that link it's clear that the OP means the plain meaning of
these words, that on the failure path a bunch of unnecessary work
should be skipped, rather than this very specific jargon reading.
Jargon's just jargon and should be discarded rather than
resurrected when it falls out of fashion or when it becomes a
barrier to communication instead of an aid to it.
This idea was expressed better by Joe Armstrong anyway.
