[Oberon] Conditional compilation using IF const THEN

[Chris Burrows]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
> Paul Reed
> Sent: Sunday, 12 August 2018 9:46 PM
> To: ETH Oberon and related systems
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] Conditional compilation using IF const THEN
> 
> Also I believe that Prof. Wirth mentions somewhere a comment by Tony
> Hoare that C-style conditional compilation of the form #if DEBUG /
> ... / #endif is like learning to swim in a pool with flotation
> assistance and then abandoning it the first time you swim in the sea!
> :)
> 
> It's certainly bad practice to be intentionally debugging a different
> program than the one you intend to ship to customers, although it's
> often done.
> 

I agree totally with that. Particularly if you are disabling runtime error
trapping. 

I was thinking of conditional compilation in the context of avoiding lots of
duplication when supporting many different targets with very similar code,

Regards,
Chris