Comments for Notes from a Messy Desk

Comment on Give me back my # key! by Mark Brown

2012-01-21T23:44:06Z

The other option is just to use escape instead of meta (which those of us who’ve had to spend time using terminals or whatever have got into the habit of doing). Reading your post I realized I don’t actually ever use the meta key, I always use escape in place of a chord.

Comment on Ruby Timeout Woes, Part 2 by Lee Hambley

2011-09-26T13:57:54Z

On what grounds do you state:

PS, library authors, your exceptions should inherit from StandardError, not Exception.

It’s a fair point, but saying that “exceptions shouldn’t inherit from Exception” does seem somewhat of a paradox.

Comment on Ruby Timeout Woes, Part 2 by Anonymous

2011-09-25T16:39:46Z

The real fix is actually a lot simpler – stop using exceptions.

Exceptions are a broken concept. You never know when and what you are going to get, for all you know even a stray ‘puts’ chillin’ in your code might suddenly have a bad day and throw an IOError taking your program with it to the grave.

They are also harder, and uglier, to handle. Ruby’s File.open is a stellar example on how exceptions should not be used. Instead of simply returning a null file pointer, which requires simple one line ‘if’ to handle, you need a lot more complicated begin-rescue-end block.

File.open is also a blatant violation of the very idea behind exceptions. Exceptions should be, well, exceptional. Now, is a failure to open a file an exception? That depends on what file we are dealing with. If it is a file that was distributed with your software that should always be available, and is missing – that’s an exception. However, if it is a file that the user wants us to open, it should be expected that something can be wrong with it – it might not exist or it might not be readable by us – there isn’t anything exceptional with those conditions so an exception should not be thrown, yet File.open is oblivious to all of this and just shoves an IOError (or whatever gets thrown) down our throats.

Comment on Pimpin’ TextMate (aka Top 5 TextMate Plugins, 2011 Edition) by Dylan

2011-09-14T18:58:27Z

Woah, totally weird, it’s like I wrote this post… (have same hardware, TextMate plugins installed and dislike of Vim editors for everyday use vs TextMate). Anyway good write up and I agree about a split window plugin- I’d pay at least $12 for it.

Comment on Pimpin’ TextMate (aka Top 5 TextMate Plugins, 2011 Edition) by Henry Hsu

2011-08-30T18:01:36Z

Thanks for the round-up! An equally awesome alternative to PeepOpen is the GoToFile bundle (https://github.com/amiel/gotofile.tmbundle).