Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:7409 comp.object:3165 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!rutgers!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.object Subject: Re: Run-time Type Errors in Smalltalk (was Re: blip (was...)) Message-ID: <3960:Apr1415:08:2891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Date: 14 Apr 91 15:08:28 GMT References: <4243.280 Organization: IR Lines: 25 In article rsw@cs.brown.EDU (Bob Weiner) writes: > In article <4243.2805b94a@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> klimas@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes: > > Some info that I picked up from a company doing a lot of big > > project work with C++ (i.e. strong type checking language) was > > that postmortems on their project revealed only 10% of their > > errors were captured by strong type checking. > I doubt that any professional software designers are willing to log every > instance that their compiler spits out an error. Their productivity might > drop considerably. It takes no effort to log every compilation. I do, and I know others who do. It does take effort to log every little change you make to your program, and every run-time error; I don't know of any C++PSE, though the company might have developed one internally. > Hence it is a fair bet that this company did not have > an accurate record of errors detected by a compiler for a strongly typed > language. It's a fair bet that the 10% was fabricated by some programmer who at the last minute was put on the spot and told to produce some statistics. But I'd believe that it was in the ballpark: a language which forces you to know what data types you're using will reduce type errors. ---Dan