Conversation

maybe a hot take, but I think this "get it right before i let you run it" approach is straight up bad UX design and it's a shame new languages like Rust haven't rejected it. tell me where I've made mistakes but still let me run my code goddammit

Quote Tweet

Bob Nystrom

@munificentbob

· Oct 8, 2021

I like this article a lot. I can distinctly remember when I first started realizing that working through compile errors and designing the types for my program *was* programming and that fixing those errors was meaningful, important progress. twitter.com/healeycodes/st…

Show this thread

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Oct 9, 2021

Yeah I want to see more languages that let you run and experiment with broken code!

stephenjohnlimb

@stephenjohnlimb

Oct 10, 2021

Use REPL for snips of stuff. But I can’t see the point of trying to run code that is known to be broken. But yes use REPL for the bit you think is right. Or are you saying you need to put a break point in just before the broken bit so you can work out something?

Replying to

and

Yeah, the elaborator would generate something like a 'ReportedIssue' node when a problem is encountered. This crashes the program if it is run, which would allow you to still experiment with the program while it's in a partially correct state.

7:03 AM · Oct 10, 2021Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

GHC has something similar with `-fdefer-type-error`, for example.

stephenjohnlimb

@stephenjohnlimb

Oct 10, 2021

So for Haskell you’ve got the mechanism, if I understand correctly. For dynamic languages like JavaScript or Python you can just try it out, much like a BASH script. So which languages would you suggest should have this capability?