Re: Announce: Grace project site operational

[Wes Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com>]

> I'd say that's a bit of a stretch. In my code I find "count types"
> most useful as array indices (something you *really* don't want to
> mix). With the list package there's no direct indexing (currently), so

Strong typing fanatics might claim (I don't)
that indexing and counting are independent
and should have separate types.

I can remember seeing folks make the mistake
of confusing a change in temperature with
the temperature itself.  Usually, for convenience,
both have the same type.  (I have also seen
a lot of proctalgia in coding to cope with
the computations involved in making them different.

Note that Ada made the separate types choice
for the analogous situation of Duration & Time.

I once read a booklet by a person who claimed
to have been an electrical engineer at NASA.

I didn't believe it when I read how he took
"one -10" (a drop in temperature of ten degrees)
and turned it into "the other -10" (ten degrees
below freezing).

I'm rambling, but my point is that such a separation
is nearly painless if the appropriate operations
are correctly defined and transparent to the client,
but that correctly defining the operations is
difficult for many people.  Even seeing the need
for such operations is beyond the capability of
a few folks.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau