The Trouble With Exceptional Exceptions

Exceptional C or C with Exceptions

C does not have exception handling facilities. Errors are handled by examining the value returned by each function and signals (conditions reported to the program) are handled by using library functions. These approaches lead to ad hoc error-handling techniques and can make programs hard to understand. Exceptional C, a superset of C, provides exception handling facilities. Exceptional C integra...

Considering the Exceptional: Incorporating Exceptions into Property Specifications

Property specifications concisely describe aspects of what a system is supposed to do. It is important that these specifications be correct, describing all the desired behavior and ruling out undesired behavior. Our experience shows that properties are sometimes specified incorrectly because specifiers fail to take into account some exceptional behaviors of the system. In previous work we prese...

Trouble with Overconfidence 1 Running head: TROUBLE WITH OVERCONFIDENCE The Trouble with Overconfidence

This paper presents a reconciliation of the three distinct ways in which the research literature has defined overconfidence: (1) overestimation of one’s actual performance, (2) overplacement of one’s performance relative to others, and (3) excessive precision in one’s beliefs. Experimental evidence shows that reversals of the first two (apparent underconfidence), when they occur, tend to be on ...

The trouble with translation

The Trouble with Cases

The recent hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's and Solicitor General Elena Kagan's nominations to the Supreme Court vividly exemplify the enthusiastic concurrence between the senators and the nominee that judges make neither law nor policy. Judges decide particular cases between particu­ lar litigants, the questioners and the responders agree, and in doing so they apply laws and policies made b...