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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1ff5003422436e4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-10-12 19:45:15 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!uunet!gwu.edu!gwu.edu!not-for-mail From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Attractive comments better? Date: 12 Oct 1994 21:35:30 -0400 Organization: George Washington University Message-ID: <37i2t2$o94@felix.seas.gwu.edu> References: <941005030023_73672.2025_DHR103-1@CompuServe.COM> <37du0k$ir2@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.164.9.3 Date: 1994-10-12T21:35:30-04:00 List-Id: In article <37du0k$ir2@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, Robert Dewar wrote: >Note that I am perfectly aware that some C/C++ programmers fully understand >the structural importance of headers, but a distressing amount of code, even >on large systems, is written without this awareness, and the headers are >an uncommented mess. And an amazing number of C books do not even take cognizance of the notion that a header file can be used for this purpose (equivalent to an Ada spec). I went shopping for intro C books recently, to find one I could use in my file structures course, in which I'm easing the students from Ada to "C with an Ada accent". I had 4 main criteria for a book, which narrowed the search from _hundreds_ (in the Computer Literacy Bookshop) to just a very few: 1. diskette of programs, and (better) a compiler shrink-wrapped; 2. suitable for self-teaching (I'm not going to teach C ab initio, because the students have had 2.5 semesters of Ada and some assembler already; 3. did justice to files, especially binary ones; 4. used headers adequately It was _very_ tough to find one. In the end, 3 and 4 got lower priority than 1 and 2. But looking at all the junk books on the market, one can easily see where all the junk code comes from. >Now of course people could write similar useless messy Ada specs, but both >the language and the culture emphasize the importance of specs so >energetically that this is relatively unusual in the Ada world. > And the C culture, in general, emphasizes it very little. Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman - chair, SIGAda Education Working Group Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The George Washington University - Washington, DC 20052 USA 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet) "Non illegitimi carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------