Re: PL/SQL -> Ada

[Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net>]

> ...

> BTW: I'd have to agree about the language lawyer types as being a
> negative sell for Ada. While I understand the value of language lawyers
> when it comes to language design and implementation, I have often been
> frustrated by them getting in the way of getting my job done. I've
> sometimes tried to do something which looks perfectly reasonable from
> the programmer's perspective only to have the compiler puke over it and
> get told by the experts "Well the compiler is doing something perfectly
> legal...." Maybe its legal but the law doesn't get the job done. Maybe
> what we need to help avoid this is get the Ada language lawyers on
> Valium or something so that when the programmer wants something
> reasonable from the compiler, the response is more one of "Hey dude! No
> problemo!" :-)
>

Well, DWIM is always the desired action, but if the language specs don't say
that it should do what you want it to, how is the compiler supposed to know?
"Perfectly reasonable" generally makes sense to another person (not always!),
but compilers need to have things spelled out in a bit more detail.