🚀 go-pugleaf

Whitney de Vries (whitney@christie.Meakins.McGill.CA) wrote:
: There is a Phd thesis  :
: 	Andrew Black
: 	Exception Handling : a case against
: 	University of Washington

Does anyone know if this can be found anywhere on the net?

: The thesis is quite old. It cover many of the exception handling
: mechanism found in languages of days gone by -- and have been
: reintroduced in other languages. He found that all the examples given for
: exceptional handling by its advocates could be rewritten in a 
: clearer style ( ie. easier to determine the control flow ) 
: using existing programming elements. His conclusion that language
: designers should not introduce exception handling mechanisms
: into programming languages. 

I can't argue with this... though I would like to read the paper. I
would not propose adding exception handling to the Oberon-2 language.
I would however like to see a consistent way of handling exceptions 
rather than by just using ASSERTs. As to whether this should be done
as a programming 'style' or by using 'standard modules' needs to be
decided by greater minds than mine. If exceptions are to be done by
'convention' I would like to see a document explaining how the 
experts think it should be done. There was another thesis or dissertation
mentioned before as well... is it available on the net?

And speaking of 'style' and 'convention', is there an Oberon-2 style
guide somewhere? 'Programming in Oberon' seems to provide a guide for
Oberon(-1) (though I think the style isn't always consistent). I haven't
read the 'Object-oriented programming in Oberon-2' book... how good is
it as a style guide? If Oberon/F has a consistent 'style', I haven't 
figured out exactly what it is yet...

Thanks,
Eric