Originally posted by: BikeDude
Originally posted by: jbourne77
While I see his point, I also recognize that regardless of whether or not the exceptions are checked, you've busted the app in most cases by introducing behavior that is unexpected by B. Granted, without checked exceptions, the app will at least run, but it will likely act quite unpredictably.
Not necessarily. In my experience you rarely care for specific exceptions. Most exceptions will halt whatever operation is currently taking place, and those specific that you care about you typically handle as needed.
The problem being that you can easily lose track of those important exceptions without the compiler's help.
And I doubt DLLs has much to do with this. Consider Anders' background (one of the lead designers of Borland Delphi) and I think you'll find DLL-hell doesn't factor into this. If you use a third-party library (in Delphi they usually come with full source), it should be reasonably simple to update said library without breaking your own code. If your code has to know about every exception thrown by methods in that library, then something is awry. (The developer will be punished each and every time the libraries are updated)
I guess people in the java world are just better at carefully planning and sticking to their apis
. But seriously, it might be nice to have an updated library "just work" despite small changes but it's that kind of Microsoftian attitude that makes you believe that everything is just fine and then, months later, someone discovers the huge security hole that you didn't anticipate. You should always know what is going on in every piece of you code (you don't have to keep it all in your head at the same time, that's bad design, but at some point you should understand the intricacies of every piece).
My guess is that checked exceptions makes it difficult to develop large Java projects.
I wouldn't have it any other way
Sometimes I wish there were no unchecked exceptions, although obviously that's not possible. The most destructive things I've seen are when seeming harmless pieces of code, like log statements, throw an unchecked exception and blow the hell out of a large transaction. There's enough trouble dealing with the ones you can't plan for.
Bottom line though: I can't help but notice that our competitors who use Java, they staff more people, incur bigger downloads, use more disk space (OK, not really important any more), burn more memory, use more CPU and... Their products look like crippled versions of our software (feature wise).
I'd love to take that bait but that argument's been had many times
I think jbourne77 summed it up pretty well.
It is very hard (impossible) to beat Borland Delphi if your target is 32-bit Windows and you have any sort of GUI in your app. And for many apps it provides an easy entry into .net as well. (as well as x86 Linux) Its aging compiler is only on par with VC++ 2.0 or so optimization-wise, but compared to Java the result flies... (plus the compiler speed is insanely fast)
Agreed, Delphi is a sweet platform.
As for the exception thing again, I guess I don't care too much one way or the other, you just have to be aware of your situation and put yourself in an appropriate coding mindset and use appropriate patterns. If I have a choice, I like checked
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