Cregg Hardwick won SearchDomino.com's June/July tip contest for his tip Structured error handling in LotusScript, which describes how the benefits of modern, structured error handling can be achieved by carefully formatting code and learning how to properly test for errors, raise custom user-defined errors and rethrow errors.
Hardwick has been working with LotusScript since it was introduced in Notes R3. "When I started, no book on LotusScript had been written yet, so I found a list of samples on Compuserve and taught myself," he said.
According to Hardwick, IBM should view LotusScript as a key component of an application suite, rather than an add-on feature. "I should not have had to submit this tip," he said, "because R6 should have shipped with structured error handling as part of the language. Structured error handling makes code more robust and cheaper to write and maintain."
When it comes to the future of LotusScript, Hardwick is pessimistic. "Although IBM likes to say that LotusScript and Visual Basic are the same language, LotusScript has never kept pace, either in the syntax, the debugger or in the API used to interact with Notes."
It's a bad sign when higher profile people like this start taking any opportunity they can to bag a product. He's right though - although he obviously hasn't realised that IBM would be quite happy if LotusScript went away, because it would make their long term conversion plans to Workplace / J2EE a whole hell of a lot easier.