OpenEuphoria

Re: The Great Computer Language Shootout

• Posted by Irv Mullins <irvm at ellijay.com> Nov 09, 2003
• 609 views

On Saturday 08 November 2003 10:27 pm, CK wrote:

> Are we talking exceptions from syntax errors? Obviously not, right? So
> are exceptions a mere convenience? or do they provide some additional
> functionality that I'm missing when using EUPHORIA?

There are errors which are difficult if not impossible to predict. And 
others which seem so unlikely that it doesn' t seem worth the effort to write 
all the necessary "guard code" to catch them.

Yet those errors are certain to occur when someone else uses your program, and 
you might prefer that the error be handled gracefully.
A program crash with reference to "see ex.err" is not what I would call 
"graceful".

Wouldn't it be easier to write:
try 
  a series of steps involving writing data to a floppy disk
otherwise
  display a message about being "unable to write to disk"
end

instead of trying to write convoluted code which would check every conceivable 
way that accessing a floppy disk could go wrong?
(no disk, write protected, bad media, not formatted .....)

> >>>  6. Internet Sockets.
> >>
> >>Available in a library, right?
> >
> >I don't think we have a good cross platform TCP library.
>
> There are some available, however, to which EUPHORIA could interface,
> right?

 Any complete?

> >>>  7. Objects.
> >>
> >>Why? And isn't this available in Bach?
> >
> >We aren't talking about Bach :)
>
> I know. But you didn't answer the "why" part. :P

Objects are *way* overrated. Yet they're extremely useful in certain 
places. Some people feel like they can't program without them, and 
that may be true; who am I to argue?

> >>>  8. Ability to print out its own version number.
> >>
> >>Okaaaay. And why? (EUPHORIA does this when you run the interpreter,
> >>right?)
> >
> >Yes, eu does this if you don't specify a program to run.
> >Do you need an answer as to why this is good?
>
> Yes. Why is it good? Or why is not having it bad?

Suppose your Euphoria program requires features which are found only in 2.4. 
Would you prefer to politely notify users who are running 2.2 that they 
should upgrade, or would you rather just have your program crash with some 
meaningless (to them) error?
Besides, since the information obviously exists already, why not make it 
available as a global constant? VERSION seems like a suitable name:)

Irv

-- 
Robert Tappen Morris, Jr., got six months in jail for crashing 10% of the
computers that Bill Gates made $100 million crashing last weekend.