Subject: Re: dealing with errors (was: "Programming is FUN again")
From: Erik Naggum <clerik@naggum.no>
Date: 1998/03/30
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3100267758827468@naggum.no>


* Brent A Ellingson
| I didn't write that assumptions should should go uncheck, or that all
| errors should be ignored, or even that ignoring errors is in general the
| best policy.  What I remember writing is that this report makes it pretty
| clear that ignoring *this* error in *this* situation would have been a
| *better* policy than allowing non-critcal code to crash both the main and
| backup guidance systems of the rocket, ultimately causing the rocket to
| be torn to shreds by the atmosphere.

  I am unable to understand that you are _not_ saying that the cause of the
  failure was that there should have been an exception handler (that did
  nothing) for this situation, but wasn't, and this flies in the face of
  the gist of the report, which was, and I repeat myself: that the bug was
  to let code run that should not have run to begin with.

  ObCL: IGNORE-ERRORS is an exception handler.

#:Erik
-- 
  religious cult update in light of new scientific discoveries:
  "when we cannot go to the comet, the comet must come to us."