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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,a00006d3c4735d70 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-02-02 06:33:52 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.abs.net!ash.uu.net!spool.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 09:33:21 -0500 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031013 Thunderbird/0.3 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: In-Out Parameters for functions References: <1075225041.167448@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1075303237.975898@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <9khh10pti0dn8gcp7f18ghptaifluj0fud@4ax.com> <1075390647.405841@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1075405582.982776@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1075482385.142744@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: KBC Financial Products Message-ID: <1075732402.294581@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Cache-Post-Path: master.nyc.kbcfp.com!unknown@carrots.nyc.kbcfp.com X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.250.10 X-Trace: 1075732402 8847 204.253.250.10 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5178 Date: 2004-02-02T09:33:21-05:00 List-Id: Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > Which means that the code is wrong. > ... > Because "found to work" /= "found correct". > ... > But isn't it better to know that the code remains valid for any order? There's no question that the code is wrong. There's no question that as the language stands, it would be better to know that it is valid for any order. The problem is that wrong code which has been found to work can slip out into production. We know this is the case in C for array bounds and pointer access, exacerbated by the compiler not checking for these kinds of errors, and I don't see why it should not be the case for Ada errors not detected by the compiler. Once this code has slipped out into production, what gain is there by having it potentially break by a change in environment?