Re: Ada student homework ?

[Nicolas Brunot <n.brunot@cadwin.com>]

> In society in general, adults do not always act responsibly,
> so age is no automatic guarantee.  (Likewise, we should not
> discriminate against younger people solely on the basis of
> age.)

And software people are no exception ... and Ada programmers even less ...
The question of age is that the discrimination is to treat them like 5 years old kids,
while a student is responsible for the way he wants to work.
If you think you are asked for a homework, I find more tolerant not to answer, than being
part of some Ada fanatics trying to rule the world, and giving them lessons about how they
should work.

> Some of us are not "scholars" in any sense of the word.

Fortunately, and I hope being one of them

> I am an Ada fan/zealot/fanatic, it is not just the language as
> defined in the standard that attracts me, but the _spirit_ of
> striving for correctness.

I'm not software fan, I use Ada professionally to write software which unique goal should
be satisfying the user, and not forget that goal to satisfy programmer's proud and theory
correctness.
In software industry, efficicency and user satisfaction should always prevail any
consideration about theory and correctness.
I'm quite sorry to see such an excellent language like Ada given bad reputation because
some Ada programmers, (to be fair, this is also true for most languages, but those language
are used in 99% of software industry) are fanatics to justify poor user satisfaction by
unquestionable theory.
The 'bit manipulation' thread is quite a good example ...
There are a lot of example where using existing components or maintain old C algorithm is
far more useful, efficient, and satisfying for the user than trying to rebuild the world
because your theory find it more elegant, and forget that it's will not possible in given
time and cost.
Some of the best programmers I worked with, didn't study computers at school, and were so
poorly interested in computers than they didn't have one at home.
Believe it or not, they wrote software far better than very good programmers, because they
were more concerned by the user, and were not polluted by the correctness of the theory.
That's why they sometimes wrote things extremely useful and satisfying for the user, just
because they didn't listen to theory fanatics who said : that's forbidden.


> * If people choose to write Fortran they should do it honestly,
>   using a Fortran compiler.

If it's their pleasure to do otherwise, I'm not sure to have the right to forbid it and put
their honesty in question