> Should examples--even beginner examples--include the error-handling code?

> Brian: I'm torn on this. Error-handling code tends to be bulky and very uninteresting and uninstructive, so it often gets in the way of learning and understanding the basic language constructs. At the same time, it's important to remind programmers that errors do happen and that their code has to be able to cope with errors.

The lesson we learn from this is that we should design languages so that error-handling code does not have to be "bulky".

I gave up on awk when Perl became available, and after that, Python. However, after reading this interview, I think I should relearn it.

bwk is a great writer. I enjoyed reading "Practice of Programming" and "The AWK Programming Language".