Re: Language support for flexible handling of system-detected errors.

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> I have not programmed MSVC++ in quite some time, so my memory of all the
> situations there has faded. (Time heals all wounds. :-) I have not spent any
> time considering how one might go about getting similar effects into Ada
> with or without comment markers. I suspect that mostly, you're right - you
> could probably auto-generate a variety of packages that are auto-withed into
> code the programmer has to develop & cover most of the territory. I'm just
> suspicious that given the mission of duplicating the programming model and
> all of its capabilities, there might be some burrs hanging off the edges
> that you'd have a hard time finding a good way of doing without some kind of
> kludge.


I don't disagree that there would be challenges. I just believe that you
can probably dispense with the special comments with some careful planning.
You have considerable context to work with in Ada. Naming conventions, whether
they be for types and/or values will probably be enough. This doesn't work
well in C++ because the macros can mess up the "view" of the source code,
as we've already discussed.


> Of course, one might want to ask the question "why bother duplicating the
> MSVC++ model at all?" I could imagine better ways of doing it might be
> possible. If you start with a solid base, you can keep polishing and
> polishing it for years. But if the base is no good, you're just polishing a
> turd.
> 
> MDC

We definitely are not interested in "polishing turds" :-)  But MSVC++ has
been used as one comparison point for IDEs. I briefly used Borland's
Delphi for a while. While it's capabilities (IDE + library) is very good,
I didn't always find it very intuitive. But you could use it as another
comparison point.  Personally, I'd agree that something better could
be made available.  For me however, I'd have to insist on some flavour
of EMACS capability in the editor. ;-)
-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg