I was bitten by this bug in version 1.9.2 of the Moodle course management system. It prevented restoring a backup made by any newer version of Moodle. Of course, such a restore could fail if it relies on features particular to the newer version. So there's a conditional that will display a message to that effect, but within the conditional was a typo:
//We compare Moodle's versions
if ($CFG->version < $info->backup_moodle_version && $status) {
- $message = new message();
+ $message = new object();
$message->serverversion = $CFG->version;
$message->serverrelease = $CFG->release;
$message->backupversion = $info->backup_moodle_version;
$message->backuprelease = $info->backup_moodle_release;
print_simple_box(get_string('noticenewerbackup','',$message),
"center"", '', "20", "noticebox");
}
In other words, by trying to warn the user about possibly erratic behavior, it caused definite failure. :)
It's dreadfully familiar, isn't it? Just a throwaway conditional that you assume will work without sufficient testing. Just a fault that slipped into a point release and was fixed in the next one. Not a big deal, but there's a lesson here.
My position on the static/dynamic typing divide is well established, even though I'm not as entrenched as some. I will somewhat happily use Python or PHP for web applications. I advocate for Scheme, and I think Ruby is neat. But I'm still disappointed whenever I produce or find faults that by all rights should have been caught by a compiler. It just demonstrates the increased importance of automated testing with coverage analysis when using dynamic languages.