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Sane defaults are a cornerstone of good language and framework design because for better or worse people don't read the manual before they start using something
by Joeri 12y ago
Sane defaults are a cornerstone of good language and framework design because for better or worse people don't read the manual before they start using something. If a compiler doesn't do the right thing by default (throwing errors on problems a new user is likely to cause), it's a bad compiler.
- BugBrother 12y agoWhat sane defaults are will change over the years. Perl kept amazing backwards compatibility by adding extra statements to modify how it worked. So "use strict;", "use warnings;" and "use <other_newer_perl_features>;". Both new code -- using the best OO system of the scripting languages, extendable syntax, etc, etc -- will run at the same time as most of the old and crufty stuff from before testing took over after the Millennium.
- SilasX 12y agoLines that can affect the global behavior of the program are a mixed blessing.
- BugBrother 12y agoIt would have been bad, if the design had been stupid enough to not make declarations file/package based... :-)