Evaluating python - a question

[Christian Tanzer]

Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote:

> As for the typos, I just imagine that the error messages in the code,
> will point you to a line number near to where the error is occurring,
> and you will trace it back through the code. I don't think it is like
> randomly searching through a haystack for a needle.

The problem are typos that are triggered rarely (e.g., in an exception
handler) -- you may correct the typo in 1 minute but your customer
might not be amused by seeing a stacktrace.

As others already pointed out, unit-tests are the answer (and will
catch a lot more bugs than static type checking, too).

> Other than that, the suggestion to use accessor methods, instead of
> accessing the datamembers directly, is probably another good tip.

Accessor methods won't do anything to prevent typos -- you have an
equal chance of mistyping the name of the accessor as mangling the
attribute name.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
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