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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,fedc2d05e82c9174 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Howard W. LUDWIG" Subject: Re: Calculating SQRT in ADA Date: 1999/03/24 Message-ID: <36F9AA62.24118202@lmco.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 458778936 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <87aex3pue4.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com> <36F913E0.75F51763@lmco.com> <7dbv4k$4r1$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Lockheed Martin -- Information Systems Center Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: howard.w.ludwig@lmco.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-03-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote: > I disagree, it is generally confusing to talk about > obsolete languages unless necessary. If people ask about > Ada, it is reasonable to assume they mean Ada 95. If people > really want to ask about Ada 83 (or Ada 80, or whatever), > then they need to qualify the questions appropriately. I would like the situation to be as you describe. If someone asks specific questions about tagged records, modular integers, etc. using appropriate terminology, then it makes good sense to assume Ada 95, as Ada 83 did not deal with such. However, we seem to get many newbies who have just been hired to maintain Ada 83 code, and many times it is apparent that either the person is using Ada 83 (because the answer to the question is obvious to the casual observer in Ada 95) or does not know where to find documentation. (Of course, we do encounter the scenario of people not wanting to bother to look up documentation, as most of us know in Robert's pulling his secret documentation out of his drawer to answer GNAT questions.) I suppose my main point is really that we should be more careful in how we address questions of potential newbies (who may not even know there is an Ada 95 in contrast to Ada 83). Some of us have this tendency to jump on such people, belittling their honest ignorance, and showing off our superior knowledge. Such responses make the true newbie a bit wary of Ada based on an apparent elitist culture in the Ada community. We don't need that kind of negative marketing. HWL