Re: ada paper critic

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

"Alderson, Paul A." wrote:
>         3.) Ada has no nice string handling capabilities.
>          (Yeah yeah yeah library XYZ does...is it in the standard
> distribution?)

Uh, yes.

>         5.) The Ada language is based upon hardware notions such as integers
> being a certain size and etc.

Uh, no. You're getting confused with C.

>                         If I want a number that represents the month in
> terms of a whole value
>                         would not the following be a better way:
> 
>                         month : 1..12;
> 
>                         Do I care that a byte or int is allocated?  If I do
> then I'll say so!


>                         One might argue that you CAN DO RANGES, but my
> pre-emptive counter point is
>                   that one does not have to use pointers in C either!

This is untrue. Every time you have an array in C you're using a pointer.

> Meaning why does integer
>                         exist?

It's a name for what's called a "base type".
 
>       6.) GENERICS GENERICS GENERICS
>                 If the programmer used generics heavily and you must certify
> to level-A you either:
>                         A.) Test one instance and say the rest are the same
> (hopefully)
>                         B.) Incur huge verification costs.

As opposed to what?

>         7.) When all else fails - unchecked conversion - sometimes just
> because!

If you're doing unchecked conversions "just because", then you're
programming in C, not Ada.

>         8.) Unhandled exception in the library?  Now what?

You catch it and handle it, unlike Java where it won't even compile. :-)

>         9.) Write to comp.lang.ada you'll get an answer there! - NOT!
>         10.) Getting my marshmellows out!

Marshmallows.
 
> essentially gets you Ada type checking and great analysis of your code (even

Err, no. Lint is not going to tell you if you assign 14 to a month.

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
** http://home.san.rr.com/dnew/DNResume.html **
** http://images.fbrtech.com/dnew/ **

     My brain needs a "back" button so I can
         remember where I left my coffee mug.