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<j..
#1 / 11
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 Programming Feature? As a beginning programmer I have used Borland Builder 4 C++ and Microfocus/Merant Net Express 3.0 (Cobol) to write programs. I can write them, compile, and execute. Naturally there are errors to correct sometimes. I was just wondering, in this techy age, when a program is written in the above languages that contains errors, why doesn't it show you in a window what the correction should be??? Makes sense to me to have this feature even if the individual is well accomplished as a programmer. I have a professor that makes errors^ I've corrected some of his... it seems that it would save time, and in a business- money... J
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Karl Heinz Buchegge
#2 / 11
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Programming Feature? Quote:
> As a beginning programmer I have used Borland Builder 4 C++ and
> Microfocus/Merant Net Express 3.0 (Cobol) to write programs. I can write
> them, compile, and execute. Naturally there are errors to correct
> sometimes.
> I was just wondering, in this techy age, when a program is written in the
> above languages that contains errors, why doesn't it show you in a window
> what the correction should be??? Makes sense to me to have this feature
> even if the individual is well accomplished as a programmer.
> I have a professor that makes errors^ I've corrected some of his...
> it seems that it would save time, and in a business- money...
> J
Besause that is not as simple as you think. eg. int iNr;
int iNum;
I declare two variables, now I use
an undeclared variable.
if( iNo == 0 )
what should be the suggestion from the compiler?
There is no other choice as to say: Undeclared variable.
Even a most likely search for a variable would come up
with anything usefull because it depends on the context
which Variable (iNr or iNum) would do the right thing.
I once saw novice programmers adding casts to their C-programm and
wondering that the program doesn't work. After studying the source
a few minutes, I came to the conclusion that they were completely
wrong. I asked them why they did this. The answer was: The compiler
told us he cant assign a pointer to struct a to a pointer to struct b,
so we added a cast to satisfy the compiler. Needless to say that
the assignment was the nonsense in the first place.
Last, but not least: Actually there are two types of errors:
* syntactical errors
* semantical errors
The first can be catched by the compiler. Normaly this isn't a big
problem, you walk through your code and correct them. Usually the
error message from the compiler gives a big hint what exactly is wrong.
(in terms of language rules)
The second are the real {*filter*}es. It is YOUR logic that is flawed and
creates the wrong answers. No program can ever check another program for
logcal flaws just by looking at it. Computers aren't intelligent (whatever
intelligent realy means), they are just very good and precise workers.
You tell them - they do. If you tell them the wrong thing - they do the
wrong thing.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Karl Heinz Buchegger
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Floris van den Ber
#3 / 11
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Programming Feature? Quote: > As a beginning programmer I have used Borland Builder 4 C++ and
> Microfocus/Merant Net Express 3.0 (Cobol) to write programs. I can write
> them, compile, and execute. Naturally there are errors to correct
> sometimes.
> I was just wondering, in this techy age, when a program is written in the
> above languages that contains errors, why doesn't it show you in a window
> what the correction should be???
Because the compiler doesn't have the slighest clue what this correction should be. All it knows is that the syntax you put in is not correct and that it can't be compiled to an executable. The error messages the compiler gives should give you a clue where your error is hiding, but in most cases you are on your own. Nothing much to do about it. Floris
PS. There are programs available that give you a more detailed discription
of your error, including memory leaks. Try PC Lint.
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Matthew M. Huntba
#4 / 11
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Programming Feature? Quote:
> I was just wondering, in this techy age, when a program is written in the
> above languages that contains errors, why doesn't it show you in a window
> what the correction should be??? Makes sense to me to have this feature
> even if the individual is well accomplished as a programmer.
There's nothing more infuriating than "error correction" software that thinks it knows what you've done wrong and puts it right. This sort of thing seems to be attached to word processors these days and its's maddening. It takes more time to undo what the machine has wrongly put in than it would take to put in what you really want in the first place. A program that automatically corrected compiler errors would be dangerous
because it would encourage complacency in the user. If instead of actually
looking to see what was wrong the user just trusted the machine had put it
right, it could introduce some very dangerous errors into code.
Matthew Huntbach
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Barry Margoli
#5 / 11
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Programming Feature?
Quote:
>> I was just wondering, in this techy age, when a program is written in the >> above languages that contains errors, why doesn't it show you in a window >> what the correction should be??? Makes sense to me to have this feature >> even if the individual is well accomplished as a programmer. >There's nothing more infuriating than "error correction" software that
>thinks it knows what you've done wrong and puts it right.
I don't think he's suggesting that, merely that the software offer suggested corrections. Like spell-check software that offers a menu of words in its dictionary that are similar, but you still have to select the word before it goes on. --
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Barry Margoli
#6 / 11
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Programming Feature?
Quote:
>> As a beginning programmer I have used Borland Builder 4 C++ and
>> Microfocus/Merant Net Express 3.0 (Cobol) to write programs. I can write
>> them, compile, and execute. Naturally there are errors to correct
>> sometimes.
>> I was just wondering, in this techy age, when a program is written in the
>> above languages that contains errors, why doesn't it show you in a window
>> what the correction should be??? Makes sense to me to have this feature
>> even if the individual is well accomplished as a programmer.
>> I have a professor that makes errors^ I've corrected some of his...
>> it seems that it would save time, and in a business- money...
>> J
>Besause that is not as simple as you think.
>eg.
> int iNr;
> int iNum;
>I declare two variables, now I use
>an undeclared variable.
> if( iNo == 0 )
>what should be the suggestion from the compiler?
>There is no other choice as to say: Undeclared variable.
>Even a most likely search for a variable would come up
>with anything usefull because it depends on the context
>which Variable (iNr or iNum) would do the right thing.
It could offer them both as possible corrections. The user could click on one of them to use it, or simply retype the statement manually. --
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Ray Du
#7 / 11
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Programming Feature? Quote:
>It could offer them both as possible corrections.
>The user could click on one of them to use it, or simply retype
>the statement manually.
But this only works for a very small class of errors, the AI required to guess the correction for most errors is nigh impossible. -- Ray Dunn Montreal
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Joe Drag
#8 / 11
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Programming Feature? Visual C++ 6 does more of a prevention tactic with it's AutoComplete (which I may add is a godsend). It basically shows you a list of possible words you could be typing as you type them (if you hit Ctrl+Enter), and once you get far enough that the variable you want is highlighted, you can hit Tab (Linux style) and it'll finish the word. And it does it for function declarations too, so as soon as I hit the
open-parentheses, if it doesn't pop up, I immediately check to see if that
variable name is declared, because it should have popped up. Maybe this is
more what you are looking for?
--
-------------------
Joe Drago
{Insert cool .sig quote here}
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| Mon, 25 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Bart
#9 / 11
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Programming Feature? Quote: >I don't think he's suggesting that, merely that the software offer
>suggested corrections. Like spell-check software that offers a menu of
>words in its dictionary that are similar, but you still have to select the
>word before it goes on.
Nice sugestion but I don't think it's very practical. In large projects it can take several hours to compile the code. Imagine if the compiler had to find out what things look similar and use all kinds of heuristics to give suggestions for corrections. This would be definitely slower than correcting manually. Besides, syntax errors are corrected very quickly by most programmers. It's not
a big deal to step through the errors and correct typos. The big problem is in
testing and finding out semantic errors (i.e. bugs).
Bart.
--
if( reply == spam )
cout << "Go away!" << endl;
else
cout << "bartkowalski" << at << "programmer.net" << endl;
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| Tue, 26 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Arto V. Viitan
#10 / 11
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Programming Feature?
>> It could offer them both as possible corrections. The user could click
>> on one of them to use it, or simply retype the statement manually.
Ray> But this only works for a very small class of errors, the AI required
Ray> to guess the correction for most errors is nigh impossible.
It depends on how good a typer you are. VisualWorks Smalltalk has this
feature, and it fixes quite a lot of my errors.
--
University of Tampere, Department of Computer Science
Tampere, Finland http://www.cs.uta.fi/~av/
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| Tue, 26 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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Ray Du
#11 / 11
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Programming Feature? Quote:
> >> It could offer them both as possible corrections. The user could
click
> >> on one of them to use it, or simply retype the statement manually.
>But this only works for a very small class of errors, the AI required
>to guess the correction for most errors is nigh impossible.
>It depends on how good a typer you are. VisualWorks Smalltalk has this
>feature, and it fixes quite a lot of my errors.
Yes it does, but that is a very small class of the errors generated by the compiler, as I said. --
Ray Dunn
Montreal
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| Tue, 26 Mar 2002 03:00:00 GMT |
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