Change the name of ArrayBoundsException in druntime

[Jesse Phillips]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:04:53 -0700, Robert Fraser wrote:

> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Robert Fraser
>> <fraserofthenight at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>>> Perhaps I'm simply getting old... when did memory use become
>>>> irrelevant?
>>>>  I grant that making an application exception safe is more difficult
>>>>  if out
>>>> of memory conditions are considered recoverable, but I don't think
>>>> it's tremendously more difficult.
>>> I'm currently studying Computer Engineering at university. I don't
>>> think a single programming course I've taken has _mentioned_ running
>>> out of memory (next quarter I'm taking Operating Systems, so hopefully
>>> that will). One class mentioned memory complexity as a side issue, but
>>> never got into it. Even at work, I've never been asked to think about
>>> it.
>> 
>> People do still develop for embedded devices with small memory and/or
>> no virtual memory.
>> I'm pretty sure it's still a serious concern if you live in that world.
>> 
>> --bb
> 
> I'm not saying it doesn't come up in practice; I'm saying developers are
> trained not to think about it in most cases. And programming to handle a
> small amount of memory is a different problem than programming to
> gracefully fail when the program runs out of memory (for example, my
> program might only use 10k of RAM... but if that 10k isn't there, it
> might just crash with an error message).
> 
> The problem with an OutOfMemoryError being treated as an Exception is
> that if there are many catch(Exception) blocks, an out-of-memory error
> will propagate logic bugs across the program (since no one is cleaning
> up the memory, most allocations will fail). So instead of a nice, clean
> error, the suer will experience weird and frustrating behavior that
> doesn't mention memory at all.

The problem with it being an error is that the programmer has no way to 
catch and remain usable, leaving the user blissfully unaware he needs to 
buy more ram. If there are many catch(Exception)'s around, the programmer 
needs to rethink what he is doing when creating a stable program.

D doesn't force a try or throw of exceptions for this very reason; people 
usually use the catch(Exception) because they don't know what needs to be 
caught and don't care but are forced to catch it, not because their 
program is crashing from an exception (well, that is what I do).