Tue, 25 Sep 2007
Syntax Error in a ... Comment?
A followup to my yesterday's post about object-oriented code in Java. In fact, I have considered entering this year's FIbot competition. The only drawback is that it is in Java. I have tried to compile their sample code, and here is another blog-post on how Java is bad:
[javac] Tile.java:4: unmappable character for encoding UTF8
[javac] * Created on 6. ?ervenec 2007, 18:14
[javac] ^
So even though Java people reinvent their own XML-happy wheel (ant
instead of make - further reading on replacing make here),
they still cannot XML-encode the information
about the charset of source code
into their Makefile-alike. Or better, into the source code
itself (Perl has been doing this for years, you can even use multiple
charsets in different parts of the source file, just notify the parser with
the appropriate "use encoding" pragma).
Anyway, the first language which barfs with a syntax error inside a comment. Talk about brain damage.
The absurdity of the situation is even bigger when you realize that this comment (saying the file creation date in Czech) is one of those superfluous comments, presumably created by some stupid IDE: it does not add any useful information (such an information would be valuable maybe inside a version control system, but not in the source code itself), and it apparently is a syntax error in some locales.
BTW, anybody interested in forming a FIbot team with me? Preferably someone who can tolerate Java.