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: 103376,55f243f32a97dc7e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: csampson@cod.nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) Subject: Re: Elaboration_check For Instantiations Date: 1997/10/30 Message-ID: <1997Oct30.183054.14961@nosc.mil>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 286001335 Sender: news@nosc.mil References: <1997Oct23.205254.25272@nosc.mil> <1997Oct28.221806.2805@nosc.mil> <34573CCF.4DE4@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> <345774b3.1434102@santaclara01.news.internex.net> Organization: Computer Sciences Corporation Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-10-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <345774b3.1434102@santaclara01.news.internex.net>, Tom Moran wrote: >>> never been happy as a programmer when a compiler says, "I'm smarter >>> than you are and I'm not going to allow you to do what you want." > >>This is the argument many C programmers use against Ada. Those that >>really understand C AND never make mistakes write working programs. > Unless the compiler is buggy, the fact it won't allow something the >programmer wrote is proof the programmer either did not understand the >language or made a mistake writing it. So the compiler has >demonstrated that it is, in fact, smarter than the programmer. ;) No, rather than saying that the compiler is buggy you have to an- swer the question, "Is it a bug or is it a feature?" There have been compilers for other languages that tried to outguess the programmer in the use of some features, either prohibiting suspicious but legal uses or at least warning about them. Fortunately, this kind of implementa- tion is close to impossible for Ada compilers because the language is so well defined. For other languages the implementers could justify disal- lowing something by saying it's not in their version of the language. (Hence, no bug.) Charlie -- ****** If my user name appears as "csampson", remove the 'c' to get my correct e-mail address.