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Program Repair Shop

60

notify_observers

• Had I been designing this, I would have eliminated:

        99          if ( $@ ) {
       100              $item->observer_error(
       101                  "Failed to send observation from '$item' to '$o': $@" );

• What's this for?

• What if one of the observers throws an exception that the caller wanted to catch?

• All this can accomplish is to screw that up

• If the caller wants to catch some exception, they could just use eval themselves

• Most software is full of features like this

• The features serve no useful purpose

• They do something that could just as easily be done by the user

• But they do it in a way that nobody could possibly want

• And they complicate the code, the design, the usability

• How to make software better:

• Cut this stuff out

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