Just my two cents, being a novice programmer in several languages you
can all take as many grains of salt as you like, is that a built in
assert method and pragma would be a great addition to the toolset, and
being such a simple piece of functionality it seems that implementation
would be fairly trivial. Yeah, rolling your own is super easy, but it
wouldn't be particularly integrated into the IDE or compiler, and would
mean that anyone taking over, assisting with, or adopting your code
would need to familiarize themselves with something that could easily be
made standard but is, instead, a one off piece of work.
Does it need to be called assert? Nah. They can name it any way they see
sensible. I understand that anytime someone suggests adopting a feature
found in one or more other languages, it can come off as insulting or
counterproductive, but it's important to sit back and really consider if
the suggested addition adds something genuinely new, is fitting with the
existing design of the language, and either won't break anything already
in place or is really really worth it. In this case, it seems to me that
this is a good match. Unlike the incrementer argument a little while
back, this would bring a fundamental tool into RB, not just a shortcut,
and seems to fit into the RB mold of rapid development and easily
maintained code.
Later,
Fargo
Brendan Murphy wrote:
Briman wrote:
Well It is called REALbasic not REALC++
It also not called...
- REALCute
- REALStupid
- REALSmart
- REALorNoReal
- REALSexy (I want that compiler if you know what I mean)
- REALdoughnut (Krispy Kreme Doughnuts)
- REALtor (Move over Godzilla)
and my favorite...
- the REALdeal
;)
In terms of asserts what we need is the capability as stated by
Andy Dent in the feedback report.
In the feedback report Andy Dent wrote:
Most importantly, as per assert macros in c and I think the new
assert in Java, when NOT in debug mode, the arguments to the
assert should NOT BE COMPILED.
The only revision I would make to what Andy wrote in the feedback
report is that it should not be limited to just debug or not
debug mode, but it should be completely independent. Asserts
should have there own pragma target that we can independently turn
on or off. Also we need a way to turn them on and off in a global
manner (see feedback report "edcqqqlj"--setting global pragmas).
The reason for this is because sometimes it is desirable to
release compiled programs with asserts turned on for debugging
purposes. When you are done with beta testing with your customers,
you want to be able to turn off the asserts for the final release
build so the program runs at maximum speed.
In the past, certain RS employees proposed that it is desirable to
leave asserts turned on all the time and the C macro method of
compiling them out based on a compile flag was not desirable
(better to trigger the assert than have a hard crash according to
them). According to this view of things, then asserts are not
asserts any more, but real error checks. In general, asserts are
for checking things that should not happen. They help you catch
logic problems when you modify a system because they
catch misusage of the modified system that may go undetected in
subtle ways. They are traps to tell you that you just messed up
and you need to look at how you are using this code. At the crux
of the assert argument is that asserts impose an overhead and will
slow things down and that is not a desirable quality for the final
build. I must qualify this statement because someone out there
will go off and say you will never notice the difference in the
compiled program, so why not leave them there in the compiled
object code. The response to that is to say that it is context
sensitive, the code in question has a context from which it is
called. So for example, if we are in a tight loop doing image
bit twiddling the cost of those asserts become very expensive. If
a method is called just once then the cost of the assert in terms
of time is miniscule and not worth bothering over.
The bottom line is what is needed is the ability to compile in or
out the assert statements at the developer's "discretion"!!!
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