From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3d6ef988ec3a5ef7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Nick Roberts" Subject: Re: miniscences Date: 1998/01/17 Message-ID: <01bd239f$50528740$99fd82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 316936941 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <01bd1e34$1632c2c0$24326489@Westley-PC.calspan.com> <01bd1fc9$99302a00$24326489@Westley-PC.calspan.com> <01bd21ff$7f85e3a0$95fc82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> <69ntk6$qj8@top.mitre.org> <01bd22bd$0b69fa60$5cfd82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Organization: UUNet UK server (post doesn't reflect views of UUNet UK) Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-01-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I do a lot of training of Ada programmers (no more jokes about the blind leading the blind, please :-}. I shall have to add this one to the list (it gets longer and longer :-| You say this is an old idiom: how old? [Uncle Nicky nearly goes back to when the only things programmed were programmed with pins in boards] I remember the days when it wowed us when we could put MID$ on the left. And when Crystal (remember them?) had got their BASIC into a 6K ROM. [Here we go...] I remember the days [pillow hits head] who threw that? Oooh yes, I was once the proud owner of the original Sinclair computer (can't even remember what it was called now). You know, the one with 1K of RAM, of which three-quarters was needed for displaying a screenful of info? Ah, those were the days. None your unary operators then. Those days it was lone operators. Ever tried getting a real BASIC program into 300-400 bytes? Ah yes, you had to be a _man_ to program those days. Ah, yes [another pillow] who threw that? [Etc...] -- Nick Roberts Croydon, UK Proprietor, ThoughtWing Software; Independent Software Development Consultant * Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com * Voicemail & Fax +44 181-405 1124 * *** Eats three shredded spams every morning for breakfast *** Robert Dewar wrote in article ... > Indeed the use of the "+" notation assumes that programmers are familiar > with this idiom. It is an old one which was well understood at the time of > the original design, and I would have thought it was pretty universally > known. Certainly it is something that all Ada programmers should be familiar > with. Even if you don't like to use it yourself, you are highly likely to > run into code that does use this convention. > > I certainly agree that the use of idioms like this is often quite dependent > on familiarity. > > Of course in this particular case, it seems to me that a programmer > who was unfamiliar with this notation would quickly find out what was > going on. You encounter the operator +, and in the normal manner, seek > out its definition (using whatever special tools ytou have to help with > this). Then the spec of this "+" will of course have comments explaining > the use. > > Anyway, it is clear that one benefit of this thread is that at least the > current readers of CLA are now familiar with this very standard idiom, > whether or not they choose to use it themselves :-)