Strictly Short Circuit
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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[^]
Thanks for pointing at this article: a pure delight ! As is turns out, little of Hoare's hints have been followed, I guess :)
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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(); }
}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
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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.
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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
In the old VB days, I worked on a project and we mandated
Option Explicitfor 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
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In the old VB days, I worked on a project and we mandated
Option Explicitfor 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
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
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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 IfIt doesn't make any sense.
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."
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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
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
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Names changed to protect the innocent... I'm working with some VB.net projects and I decided to turn on Option Strict. It threw an error for this line:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value OrElse someProp.Value = "0") Then
This is what was intended:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value) OrElse someProp.Value = "0" Then
:-D for option explicit! :(( for the fact that I have several projects to go and I'm working in the order of best code to worst code.
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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.
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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[^]
The paper doesn't seem to mention anything about implicit conversion on two incompatible types. And even so, implicit conversion can be implemented on a type so two incompatible types become compatible, but the conversion is implemented by a custom algorithm. I still think that should never be allowed.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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Names changed to protect the innocent... I'm working with some VB.net projects and I decided to turn on Option Strict. It threw an error for this line:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value OrElse someProp.Value = "0") Then
This is what was intended:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value) OrElse someProp.Value = "0" Then
:-D for option explicit! :(( for the fact that I have several projects to go and I'm working in the order of best code to worst code.
This is why it's good to always explcitly define your intentions with the proper parenthesis. It makes it easier to detect mistakes like that and for someone else to read and deduce your intent. You can easily produce similar errors in logical grouping in C# or other languages. Even if not with that particular syntax. ;-)
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Yeah, the real horror is that VB.net allows that at all.
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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."
That's because somebody read a PHP book, puked in his mouth, and is still trying to wash away the filth.
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Names changed to protect the innocent... I'm working with some VB.net projects and I decided to turn on Option Strict. It threw an error for this line:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value OrElse someProp.Value = "0") Then
This is what was intended:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value) OrElse someProp.Value = "0" Then
:-D for option explicit! :(( for the fact that I have several projects to go and I'm working in the order of best code to worst code.
Option strict FTW! Option strict all the way! Option strict is the first thing I turn on when anyone hands me a VB.Net project. I'll say it a million times: I would rather get a compile time error than a runtime error. Option strict won't flag every possible runtime error, but it will flag most of the boneheaded ones.
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Slight disagreement. The real horror is that the developer has to specify, "Yes, please use short-circuit boolean logic" by using OrElse instead of that being the default behavior.
You mean like it is in every other language? The way it should be?
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Names changed to protect the innocent... I'm working with some VB.net projects and I decided to turn on Option Strict. It threw an error for this line:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value OrElse someProp.Value = "0") Then
This is what was intended:
If someProp Is Nothing OrElse String.IsNullOrEmpty(someProp.Value) OrElse someProp.Value = "0" Then
:-D for option explicit! :(( for the fact that I have several projects to go and I'm working in the order of best code to worst code.
I can develop in more than 10 language (actually, I don't know exactly how much languages I now, I always forgot some) and I have no preference for the best language. Almost all the time I use C#, but I use others as needed if the moment needs and it pays my bills. But, I really don't like VB at all. I know VB since VB 5.0 (or 3.0, I don't remember, the year was 98) and these syntax flaws are really annoying. The VB (also VB .net) rounding is also terribly, all languages that I know truncate integer division and VB round it. The backwards compatibility of VB .net with VB 6 projects made VB .net a horrible language. I'm really experienced with VB (and VB .net) and it's a pain to correct legacy code in this language, so good luck!
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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
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
If it's not the highest priority your company has problems.
If we make it our highest priority we'll be fixing software that 'works' as far as the customer is concerned. We won't be able to make new software anytime soon. We won't have any revenues for the coming months, just fixes that might not fix all they were supposed to fix. And lots of angry customers. No, if we made it our top priority THEN we have a problem... I might not be happy with it, my boss might not be happy with it, but that's just the way it is. Luckily, any new software we built is built with option strict on :)
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
} -
Slight disagreement. The real horror is that the developer has to specify, "Yes, please use short-circuit boolean logic" by using OrElse instead of that being the default behavior.
And the IIf function doesn't even have a short-circuit version! If you're used to writing code like this in C#:
int count = list == null ? 0 : list.Count;
and you try to translate to VB:
dim count as integer = iif(list is nothing, 0, list.Count)
you will wind up with a NullReferenceException when list is null/nothing!
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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 IntegerArea = 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 -
And the IIf function doesn't even have a short-circuit version! If you're used to writing code like this in C#:
int count = list == null ? 0 : list.Count;
and you try to translate to VB:
dim count as integer = iif(list is nothing, 0, list.Count)
you will wind up with a NullReferenceException when list is null/nothing!
Actually, since VB 2008, that's no longer true. The If Operator (without the extra I) The 3 parameter form act like the C# ternary operator
? :, while the 2 parameter form would be the C# coalesce??. But yes, TRWTF is VB.
