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When you learn a natural language, you can speak with a native speaker even if you make a lot of mistakes; he'll still understand you (and maybe try to help you
by corentin 19y ago
When you learn a natural language, you can speak with a native speaker even if you make a lot of mistakes; he'll still understand you (and maybe try to help you improve).
Computer languages "feedback" (error messages, etc.) is poor. It's interesting: you can find hundreds of blog posts about syntax, garbage collections, string libraries or whatever but nobody seems to care about error/warning messages. It's a thing that hasn't evolved since a long time.
- amichail 19y agoSome progress has been made: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/blerner/papers/seminal_pldi2007.html http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/blerner/papers/seminal_pl...
- pixcavator 19y ago>When you learn a natural language, you can speak with a native speaker even if you make a lot of mistakes; he'll still understand you... This is simply not true, especially the last part. This comes from experience, on both ends.
- corentin 19y agoI not am in agree to you.
- pixcavator 19y ago>I not am in agree to you. This is "translated" from English!
- michaelneale 19y agoI totally agree. Its a lost art. The horror of the error messages seems to be proportional to the square of the pretty ness of the language. I find scheme error messages much friendly the common lisp (which some would say bucks the trend a bit, but they are both lisp I guess). Also, dynamic typing, and type inference can result in massive bum-steer errors. Its boring staticaly typed languages that tend to be more friendly for error messages. eg most java compilers will tell you, to annoying accuracy what you should have said, where you should have put a ; etc... (which makes you think, why doesn't it just do it !). Some dyn langs to better then others, I think python isn't too bad, but I find ruby really noisy and wierd when I stuff up.