[racket-dev] guidelines on error messages -- please send feedback
An hour and a half ago, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
> Please review these guidelines and let us know if anything is
> unclear. We'd like to hear back from you within a week, by
* Start the message with the name of the construct whose constraint is
being violated, followed by a colon.
Should give a quick example to clarify that `error' does that when
given a symbol. I can see people following this blindly and
getting
-> (error 'foo "foo: blah blah")
foo: foo: blah blah
* ... somewhat anthropomorphically ...
See second item in the guidelines, apply reflection.
* procedure, primitive name, primitive operator, predicate, selector,
constructor
->
function
+1, for more than the student languages.
* variable -> identifier
(-0.52 because I can see it leaking out of the SLs)
* do not write `' around keyword
This can work only in a limited context, where you use
colors/font/etc or you know that there is no keyword in your world
that can be confused with text like `like'. Perhaps it would be a
hook to start using some unicode things? 〈x〉 «x» ⌈x⌋
--
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay:
http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life!