Re: Announce: Grace project site operational

[William C. Brennan <brennan@netaxs.com>]

On Wed, 8 May 2002 12:31:44 -0400, Larry Kilgallen wrote
(in message <TP7CiYvFfPBT@eisner.encompasserve.org>):

> In article <3CD94E63.3050607@mail.com>, Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> 
> writes:
> 
> And as an Ada programmer, I thank you for that diligence.
> I have a lot of "count" types in a program I am working on
> currently, and I would appreciate it if packages provided
> that, in the spirit of Ada.
> 

For my own personal preference, I have to weigh in with Larry here.  
In the "spirit of Ada" (oh, it feels good to wrap one's self in the flag ;-)) I use a 
unique type for whatever I'm counting: electrons, meters, apple-pushcarts, apples, 
or "items".  In fact, it still disappoints me (slightly) that the Ada 83 language 
team failed to create String indexed by its own Character_Index type.

I'm a little surprised to hear, at least as sampled in this tiny forum, that so many
Ada fans are quick to give up the same benefits for counting objects 
as they are for counting things with more traditionally defined units.  It has always 
given me a nice fuzzy feeling that I know I can't accidentally substitue number_of_apple_
carts for number_of_apples in exactly the same way I feel secure that I can't subsititute 
seconds for hours.  It never felt like "overkill" to me, and I don't think this philosophy
leads to an explosion of unique types.  Using Integer (and its sisters Natural and
Positive) just absolutely reeks of C's int, and I avoid it whenever I can.  Of course,
I use Strings, so I can't avoid it as much as I would like. ;-)
It's my style - no not just mine... it's the Ada style. ;-)  (So have I shamed the 
rest of you into it yet?)

So, anyway, it would be nice if the container packages didn't force me to use Natural to
count my apple_carts when I don't wouldn't use this type myself.  It would be a *small* 
inconvenience to specify the counting type as the actual generic parameter.


-- 
Bill Brennan
brennan@netaxs.com