From: Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Ada's complexity
Date: 1998/02/20
Date: 1998-02-20T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <34ED7C02.1287518F@cl.cam.ac.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 6cgk8s$2on2@alumni.rpi.edu
Steve Furlong wrote:
>
> In article <dewar.887723305@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
> >As for richness leading to complexity, that's misleading. For example, the
> >exception facility of Ada definitelty makes the language more complex from
> >the point of view of bothg implementation and definition, but it makes
> >*using* Ada to solve a problem that requires exception handling simpler,
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >and it is this kind of sinmplicitly that is most important to programmers.
>
> Which would be, what, all programs?
In most software I write, more code is dedicated to the handling
of error conditions than to actually solving the problem. The
actual algorithms gets in languages without exception handlers
easily lost between all the checks that are necessary to ensure
robust behaviour of high-quality code under all imagineable
situations. Exception handlers allow to separate rather nicely
the error handling code from the actual algorithm and can
contribute a lot to the readability of software that is not
just a rapid prototype but that has to fulfill strict robustness
requirements.
Markus
--
Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK
email: mkuhn at acm.org, home page: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-02-20 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 52+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-02-15 0:00 Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Ralph Paul
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Joe Gwinn
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` vonhend
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-22 0:00 ` Simon Wright
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Dan Moran
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Joe Gwinn
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-19 0:00 ` John English
1998-02-22 0:00 ` Luis Espinal
1998-02-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-23 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-02-24 0:00 ` Jonas Nygren
1998-02-24 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-25 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-02-25 0:00 ` Keith Thompson
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Laurent Guerby
1998-03-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-03-03 0:00 ` Stanley R. Allen
1998-02-19 0:00 ` Ada's complexity Steve Furlong
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn [this message]
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement Simon Wright
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-19 0:00 ` Stanley R. Allen
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Stanley R. Allen
1998-03-05 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Andi Kleen
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Geert Bosch
1998-02-19 0:00 ` Parsing Ada and C++ Steve Furlong
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement nabbasi
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-16 0:00 ` nabbasi
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