Anyone got any good horror stories about 'use strict'?

Sorry, I don't.

As I consider myself to be a good listener, I started using strict from my very first script.

However, I have many horror stories of trying to find a mistake in scripts written by somebody else, without "use strict" at the top.

And yes, 9 out of 10, after working my way through hundreds of error messages, I found the mistake, which usually turned out to be a misspelled variable.

What's your point? Are you trying to say that "use strict" is bad for your development time? If so, I'm afraid that you are barking at the wrong tree. The majority of the Monks could tell you many reasons why "use strict" can make you save development time, not the other way around.

Programmers who don't use strict sooner or later run into trouble, and then they have to call somebody who makes money out of their carelessness. How about this for an horror story? BTW, would you like to play Dracula or the Vampire Hunter?:)

I should also add some good references to the reasons:

• 101 reasons to use strict;
• Use strict and warnings
• Why We Use Strict!
• Use strict warnings and diagnostics

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Quite the opposite. 'use strict' costs seconds in the short term to add it and fix the resulting messages, but saves HOURS in the longer term.

I'm trying to elicit "don't let this happen to you" tales, to encourage people to use it.

"YES, you do have time to work through 100s of error messages."

Strict keeps me from doing stupid stuff like i demonstrated many moons ago at (jeffa) Re: using. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me design my ideas before i start coding or stop at good points along the way for sanity checks and it sure doesn't enforce me to use CVS.

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Having taught Computer Science labs in the past (C++), i noticed that many, many students try to write the entire program up front, then try to debug everything.

I used to do the labs that way during the first years when I was a student as well. But that's basically because you had to. Terminals were a commodity, and you had to make a reservation in advance. With a two hour limit a day. We were lucky if had terminal access more than three times a week. And programs were usually due 10 days after handing out the assignment. With several programming classes running in parallel. So, we usually ended up writing the complete programs by hand first, then typing it in when getting terminal access, hoping you could fix all the bugs in two hours!

Abigail

Just a thought, but shouldn't the title of this be Tales from the Scrypt?

Just a thought.

There are no horror stories about using strict. Those that do have them either: a) recognize that going strict compliant just saved them from potential horror stories and thus do not consider it a strict horror story, or b) don't recognize the above and do without strict and have other horror stories that they'll never admit have anything to do with not using strict. Is this teleological reasoning? Sure, but that doesn't make it any less true :-)

Anyone got any good horror stories about 'use strict'?

There is one node, here where I recount my experiences, but I guess it's more of a happy tale than a horror story :).

--rinceWind