Discussion

The C++ language offers many opportunities to "accelerate" error detection by pushing it to compilation time. Exploiting these static checking capabilities offers you many advantages, including the following:

• Static checks are data- and flow-independent: Static checking offers guarantees that are independent of the program inputs or execution flow. In contrast, to make sure that your run-time checking is strong enough, you need to test it for a representative sample of all inputs. This is a daunting task for all but the most trivial systems.

• Statically expressed models are stronger: Oftentimes, a program that relies less on run-time checks and more on compile-time checks reflects a better design because the model the program creates is properly expressed using C++'s type system. This way, you and the compiler are partners having a consistent view of the program's invariants; run-time checks are often a fallback to do checking that could be done statically but cannot be expressed precisely in the language. (See Item 68.)

• Static checks don't incur run-time overhead: With static checks replacing dynamic checks, the resulting executable will be faster without sacrificing correctness.

One of C++'s most powerful static checking tools is its static type checking. The debate on whether types should be checked statically (C++, Java, ML, Haskell) or dynamically (Smalltalk, Ruby, Python, Lisp) is open and lively. There is no clear winner in the general case, and there are languages and development styles that favor either kind of checking with reportedly good results. The static checking crowd argues that a large category of run-time error handling can be thus easily eliminated, resulting in stronger programs. On the other hand, the dynamic checking camp says that compilers can only check a fraction of potential bugs, so if you need to write unit tests anyway you might as well not bother with static checking at all and get a less restrictive programming environment.

One thing is clear: Within the context of the statically typed language C++, which provides strong static checking and little automatic run-time checking, programmers should definitely use the type system to their advantage wherever possible (see also Items 90 through 100). At the same time, run-time checks are sensible for data- and flow-dependent checking (e.g., array bounds checking or input data validation) (see Items 70 and 71).