From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7679 invoked by alias); 16 Nov 2009 11:56:48 -0000 Received: (qmail 7670 invoked by uid 22791); 16 Nov 2009 11:56:47 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail.network-theory.co.uk (HELO mail.network-theory.co.uk) (66.199.228.187) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:55:44 +0000 Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:56:00 -0000 Message-ID: <87r5ryu45r.wl%bjg@network-theory.co.uk> From: Brian Gough To: gsl-discuss@sourceware.org Subject: Re: containers tentative design summary In-Reply-To: <4AFFC617.9050707@iki.fi> References: <1257277549.19313.118.camel@manticore.lanl.gov> <1257808063.11663.3.camel@manticore.lanl.gov> <87tywxtbf4.wl%bjg@network-theory.co.uk> <4AFFC617.9050707@iki.fi> User-Agent: Wanderlust/2.14.0 (Africa) Emacs/22.1 Mule/5.0 (SAKAKI) MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by SEMI 1.14.6 - "Maruoka") Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Message-Mac: d1066c5348ded8c79fe8f4fd374f565f Mailing-List: contact gsl-discuss-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gsl-discuss-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2009-q4/txt/msg00045.txt.bz2 At Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:12:55 +0200, Tuomo Keskitalo wrote: > Currently GSL uses C in a type-safe manner which forces somewhat > complicated APIs for everyone but enables users to find some lethal > bugs. More user-friendly APIs would allow people to silently break their > programs if they are not careful. And there is no compromise. Does this > summarize the situation? I think that's a fair summary. The philosophy in GSL has always been to try to make things safe by default (for example, the error handler), because writing correct numerical programs is already difficult enough without silent errors. -- Brian Gough