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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b1f194b75ae020e4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robb.Nebbe@di.epfl.ch (Robb Nebbe) Subject: Re: children Date: 1995/03/30 Message-ID: <1995Mar30.112512@di.epfl.ch>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 100540647 distribution: world sender: nebbe@lglsun3.epfl.ch (Robb Nebbe) references: <3kv64j$1fhh@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> <3l3kp9$rgv@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1995-03-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , kst@thomsoft.com (Keith Thompson) writes: |> Mind you, I *like* child units, and I'm glad that Ada 95 has them. |> I'm just suggesting that a little bit of theoretical security has been |> lost relative to Ada 83; it's not surprising that a lot of people are |> uncomfortable with that. I am not surprised that people might initially react to the perceived loss of security but once you have thought about it I don't see how they can continue to worry about it. My perspective is that child units substantially increase the flexibility of the langauge. I want the language to protect me from accidental mistakes and inconsistent models. I like the fact that Ada makes me say what I mean but once I have said it I don't want the language to second guess me I want it to make sure I stick to it. For me child units replace several uses of Unchecked_Conversion and cases where I would have had to nest a package inside another. If I would have put something in another package in Ada83 I will not put it in a child package in Ada95. Of course there is nothing in the language to stop me from doing this but there is nothing in Ada83 to stop me from nesting a package inside another either. The need for a pragma to restrict unwanted children is really no more important that a pragma to restrict unwanted nested packages, which we seemed to do fine without in Ada83. Robb Nebbe