Re: Q: type ... is new String

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:05:18 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
>> This may be a consequence of the attitude in the web,
>> which does not normally use "type" at all. Not at the level of
>> system integration, where it matters. The AI job, then, is to look
>> at the forms and try to make sense, even when things are malformed.
>> REJECT is not an option.
>
> Yes, this is a consequence of a misconception.

At least HTML5 addresses this, as it specifies malformed input handling.

> Note that *exactly* same
> misconception is behind dynamic preconditions of Eiffel now unfortunately
> introduced in Ada 2012.

There's nothing wrong with it, and it does not betray Ada's spirit, as it  
helps to catch errors as much soon as possible. When an error is not (or  
cannot be) caught at compile time, that's still better to catch it the  
sooner at runtime, rather than after a long chain of consequences which  
hides the error origination. That's what dynamic check of contracts is  
for. After all, we have runtime range‑check, since Ada's birth, which is  
similar.

I don't understand your frequent griefs against runtime check of  
contracts. Anyway, this does not prevent anyone to statically prove a  
program with SPARK (or may be Coq) if one is able to. If you can't, you  
just still have the option of runtime checking contracts, which is better  
than nothing.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University