[PRL] Joel on Software - Making Wrong Code Look Wrong

[Dave Herman]

> Interesting reading...  I smell types...  Of course the PLT naming 
> conventions are very much in tune with what he's thinking.

Yes, especially using types as "labels" to describe domain-specific 
properties of code that the host language's type system doesn't 
understand. This is often what people use interfaces for. You could 
actually enforce those safe/unsafe properties of strings in his example 
using interfaces instead of naming conventions.

I wonder if you could also introduce a "label" mechanism into MrFlow, 
where you could tag values as having that label, and tag the basic 
operations with contracts describing what they require/provide with 
those labels.

[Oop -- I see Paul's had the same idea..]

> And of course the last part, the Rant Against Exceptions is also a Rant 
> Against Advice.

I see this as an instance of the usual tension between expressive power 
and local reasoning. For maximum egotism, allow me to reference myself:

http://calculist.blogspot.com/2005/04/balance-of-expressiveness-and.html

Dave