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,ca0b11ae1c9a00cb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: Ada's complexity Date: 1998/02/20 Message-ID: <34ED7C02.1287518F@cl.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 326917007 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <34E7B551.115C289F@cs.utexas.edu> <34E91572.CE9CEED2@cs.utexas.edu> <6cgk8s$2on2@alumni.rpi.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Cambridge University, Computer Laboratory Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-02-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Steve Furlong wrote: > > In article , Robert Dewar 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: