Strictly Short Circuit

[ZurdoDev]

That's good entertainment. You just have to laugh.

[cpkilekofp]

eh, this is a garden-variety typo bug. I wouldn't count it as a horror as it doesn't look intentional. Even so, I can feel a sympathetic headache building...thanks :~

[AspDotNetDev]

Yeah, the real horror is that VB.net allows that at all.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

[ZurdoDev]

Allowing OrElse inside of an IsNullOrEmpty is a bad thing? On the contrary, that could be very useful.

[AspDotNetDev]

The bad part is that the OrElse is between a string and a boolean, which is returning a boolean, which then gets passed as a parameter to String.IsNullOrEmpty.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

[ZurdoDev]

True object-oriented programming allows it because they are all objects. It doesn't care.

[AspDotNetDev]

Using a string as a boolean has nothing to do with object-oriented programming. If the code were directly comparing the boolean and the string, that might be considered something near valid (what with operator overloading), but that was not the case here. This code is basically like doing this:

If "Dragons" Then
' Dragons be true!
Else
' Dragons be false :-(
End If

It doesn't make any sense.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

[ZurdoDev]

You are right, the code did not make any sense. That you are right about.

[cpkilekofp]

AspDotNetDev wrote:

The bad part is that the OrElse is between a string and a boolean, which is returning a boolean, which then gets passed as a parameter to String.IsNullOrEmpty.

Uh, that's WHY there is an Option Strict: to allow relaxed type checking on certain operations. Though here it is certainly annoying, and one of the reasons I tend to use Option Strict pretty consistently.

[YvesDaoust]

Computers should be used for what they are good at: systematic consistency checks. Because this is where they can help preventing bugs early. Static analysis. If I were God, I would make the Strict mode compulsory. And enhance the programming languages to help computers help us. For instance by introducing dimensional analysis on the data.

Dim Meters as Unit
Dim Side As Integer in Meters, Area As Integer in Meters^2, Count(0 To 5) As Integer

Area = 3 * Side 'Error: Option Strict On disallows implicit conversion from Meters to Meters^2
Count(Side) = Count(Side) + 1 'Error: Option Strict On disallows using dimensional expressions as indexes

[Sander Rossel]

I feel your pain! Our company has a product where turning Option Strict On results in probably 1000's of errors... Stuff like:

Dim i As Integer = someStringThatSupposedlyCanOnlyHoldAnInteger

The worst part is that code like this goes wrong on regular basis. Our users will never know though... Errors are caught and logged (preferably at the lowerst level, some 10 functions deep) and the software goes on like nothing ever happened :)

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}

[PIEBALDconsult]

That should be possible with OOP. A Lounge post earlier in the week led me to a paper written by C. A. R. Hoare in 1973 in which he states that a language should allow that: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~bchandra/courses/papers/Hoare_Hints.pdf[^]

[YvesDaoust]

Thanks for pointing at this article: a pure delight ! As is turns out, little of Hoare's hints have been followed, I guess :)

[Jorgen Andersson]

Naerling wrote:

Our company has a product where turning Option Strict On results in probably 1000's of errors

Then you need to start fixing now. Enable it on file level and fix the files one by one. If it's not the highest priority your company has problems.

Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak. List of common misconceptions

[Jan Steyn]

I have never programmed in VB without Option Strict and Option Explicit turned on. That is the only way that VB doesn't turn into an absolute nightmare.

[Nagy Vilmos]

In the old VB days, I worked on a project and we mandated Option Explicit for all files. One dev kept removing it as his code wouldn't build when it was switched on...

---

Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett

[Jorgen Andersson]

How did you punish him?

Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak. List of common misconceptions

[dawmail333]

Someone doesn't use PHP.

Don't forget to rate my post if it helped! ;) "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." "His mother should have thrown him away, and kept the stork." "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." "He loves nature, in spite of what it did to him."

[Nagy Vilmos]

It was a long process of giving him a roll kick to the nadgers every time he checked in a file without Option Explicit. We needed to have a rota.

---

Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett

[Lost User]

The Law of Missing Parentheses: Keep adding closing parenthesis at the end till the compiler stops complaining about them. :-)