How to improve Squeak

Marcus Denker denker at iam.unibe.ch
Mon Jul 12 07:53:42 UTC 2004


Am 12.07.2004 um 07:58 schrieb Stephan Rudlof:

>>
>>
>> One point to make here is that with a few safeguards, there wouldn't 
>> be
>> anyone to "blame". The proper process in the right setting would make 
>> sure
>> this doesn't happen.
>
> How should this work? What do you mean with a few safeguards (there are
> already some of them in the actual process)?
>

The interesting thing is that this question is a pretty fundamental 
one: When designing
Systems, there are two philosopies of how to deal with errors or 
failures: 1) Make sure
no Error happens 2) Errors will happen, deal with them.

The interesting thing is now that 2) allows to make the whole System 
much much simpler
and powerful, as you can ommit all the savegards that ensured 
"correctness" before.

Examples are:  TCP/IP vs. the other system (e.g. ISDN), dynamic vs. 
static typing, Agile
software development (e.g. XP) Vs. heavy weight methods, early Vs. late 
binding...

Failiure is no "exceptional" state of a system, but the most important 
one to design for.

     Marcus





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