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From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Can I talk about Parlog here?
Message-ID: <3079@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk>
Date: 26 Nov 90 15:29:54 GMT
References: <1990Nov15.190217.21923@ida.liu.se> <3056@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk> <1990Nov20.182520.9609@ida.liu.se>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK.
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In article <1990Nov20.182520.9609@ida.liu.se> felkl@aste16.Berkeley.EDU (Feliks Kluzniak) writes:
>The questions are: is it TEDIOUS to write your program so that it will
>not crash? Can you expect only commercial programs not to crash?
>
Suppose the point which causes the program to crash occurs
somewhere where it is very difficult to track down, and will
require months of programming to solve. A version of the
program released for experimental use might result in the users
deciding that the bit which causes the crash isn't important
and can be left out. The implementors are then freed from
wasting their time debugging something that wasn't useful
anyway.

Releasing experimental languages before the code is fully
debugged is like getting your papers refereed. It's better for
the research community that interesting papers are debugged
through the refereeing process than that research results don't
get heard about for years because the researchers are spending
all their time trying to get their papers to the point where
they can be published without alteration.

Matthew Huntbach