Re: good software engineering (was: mixing integer and logical ops)

[skates.gsfc.nasa.gov!bambam.gsfc.nasa.gov!nbssal@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Step he Leake)]

Wes Groleau writes...
>>     I've always thought that one of the major advantages of Ada was
>>that it makes bad code look so bad that the author fixes it, often
>>before anyone else sees it.
> 

Robert I. Eachus writes:
>I think the reason is not that Ada makes it easier to spot "bad code"
>Rather, IMHO, it's that the "Ada community" has from the beginning
>had an attitude in favor of "pretty" and readable source code.  The
>C community on the other hand is unsuccessfully trying to change a
>culture that EXPECTS code to be unreadable.

I'll go with Wes; I've always found that if Ada makes me work to hard to do
what I think I want to do, there is usually a better way, or I don't really
want to do it. Put another way, if you find yourself writing inelegant Ada
code, take a step back and think the problem thru again. Maybe peruse the LRM;
some feature of Ada that you had temporarily forgotten about might jump and
suggest a better approach.

Stephen Leake	NASA Goddard Robotics Lab
internet : nbssal@robots.gsfc.nasa.gov