2026-09-17 05:38:17 <deadmarshal > veltas: ah ok
2026-09-17 05:38:42 <deadmarshal > I myself prefer errors as values since they are easier
2026-09-17 09:16:54 <veltas      > I think there are limited situations where exceptions are a good idea
2026-09-17 09:17:29 <veltas      > For example in a recursive descent parser exceptions are really convenient way to handle syntax errors
2026-09-17 12:17:25 <deadmarshal > right
2026-09-17 16:26:33 <xentrac     > veltas: I think Rust and Zig are the kind of extremely imperative languages where, as you said, "it's hard to get exceptions right because mutating state you are always at risk of an exception firing incorrect because of some implicit exception that wasn't clear in the code"
2026-09-17 16:26:56 <xentrac     > I don't think Java got exceptions right at all; Java's exception system is almost unusable
2026-09-17 16:28:37 <xentrac     > for embedded systems I feel like any way of detecting errors at runtime is usually inadequate because the best you can do is reboot after maybe writing a fault log entry to Flash or something. the user generally isn't going to log in and review logfiles to figure out why their lightswitch or bicycle isn't working
2026-09-17 16:29:29 <bjorkintosh > and so the BEAM was created, n'est ce pas?
2026-09-17 16:55:51 <iv4nshm4k0v > There're different kinds of "embedded" - the user /might/ log into their "router" to figure out why their Wi-Fi isn't working, for example.  And on the other hand, some services might end up used so heavily as to make logging into a file a lot of pain to questionable gain.  I suspect that's where readproctitle(8) logging might be useful; http://untroubled.org/daemontools-encore/readproctitle.8.html .
2026-09-17 16:58:41 <bjorkintosh > for those (embedded) scenarios, I think cgi is still the way to go isn't it?
2026-09-17 16:58:49 <bjorkintosh > or some variation thereof.
2026-09-17 17:07:47 <iv4nshm4k0v > "CGI" isn't an option for embedded software that runs on 8-bit MCUs.  And my personal preference is /not/ to use a Raspberry Pi where a 8-bit MCU suffices - such as for "light switches" - easier to test it thoroughly, for one thing.
2026-09-17 17:08:40 <bjorkintosh > definitely.
2026-09-17 17:08:46 <bjorkintosh > at that point, asm is your friend.
2026-09-17 17:10:34 <iv4nshm4k0v > I have experience writing everything in AVR assembly, and, well, these days, I'd rather use GCC.  Though I, too, have experience of using "$ gcc -S " to check that the code indeed does what I intend it to do.
2026-09-17 17:56:31 <xentrac     > yeah, assembly is significantly quicker to read than to write