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nwf / dyna

Dyna2 compiler and REPL
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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disclaimer upon startup #6

Open jeisner opened 11 years ago

jeisner commented 11 years ago

Startup message should warn: "Dyna will eventually be efficient again. This version X.Y.Z is an inefficient prototype intended to test a new version of the language and interface."

timvieira commented 11 years ago

Should use positive language. Do we really want to warn on startup everytime? The README, documentation, "$ dyna [--version|--about]" seem like more appropriate places.

jeisner commented 11 years ago

Well, I think first impressions really count, especially when amplified by word-of-mouth. So releasing this version in any way is rather dangerous. An alternative would be to print an apology to stderr for the first query in each session that takes more than 0.5 sec to answer.

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Tim Vieira notifications@github.comwrote:

Should use positive language. Do we really want to warn on startup everytime? The README, documentation, "$ dyna [--version|--about]" seem like more appropriate places.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/nwf/dyna/issues/6#issuecomment-18914526 .

timvieira commented 11 years ago

I like this idea of a disclaimer/apology for taking a while to answer a query. It's also a great place to remind users that it's OK to hit control-c -- their work won't be lost and the REPL won't die.

This also helps in the case of non-terminating programs like examples/fib.dyna. Although we could just call the halting oracle...

We could also print some information (memory usage/size of chart, repropagation rate, cycle detection, transient errors).

Precedent: Java catches SIGQUIT and dumps a bunch of memory stats. The bazaar version control system catches SIGQUIT and fires up a debugger where ever the program left off (which could be anywhere). Any other examples?