From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4751d44ff54a2c2c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-08-05 04:40:43 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D4E652E.FDB4C1C@earthlink.net> From: "Marc A. Criley" Organization: Quadrus Corporation X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: 64-bit integers in Ada References: <3CE3978F.6070704@gmx.spam.egg.sausage.and.spam.net> <5ee5b646.0208030424.39703482@posting.google.com> <3D4C2805.62563584@adaworks.com> <5ee5b646.0208040607.ebb6909@posting.googOrganization: LJK Software <5ee5b646.0208041748.3feb353f@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 11:40:19 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.190.209.135 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net 1028547619 63.190.209.135 (Mon, 05 Aug 2002 04:40:19 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 04:40:19 PDT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:27693 Date: 2002-08-05T11:40:19+00:00 List-Id: Robert Dewar wrote: > > Actually, this kind of short range thinking (sorry I am too > busy to learn how to do things right, I have too much to > worry about) is really inappropriate to the Ada world and > the world of serious software engineering. I can't tell you > how many projects have a heck of a time porting legacy code > because programmers have not given attention to the issue of writing > portable code earlier on. I can certainly vouch for the presence of this practice in the industry. I've done a few ports over the years, and so many times I have to deal with problems that had the original developers spent just 5 minutes thinking about how to implement in an "Ada" way, rather than the first approach that came into their head, would've eliminated the porting problem and made the original code more straightforward and readable. The latest was the message buffer handling portion, wherein Unchecked_Conversion, 'Address, and an Interfaced memcpy routine were used to move the bits around from buffer to buffer, and to build and unpack messages. Variant records and assignment statements would've worked just as well. Although, software systems like these are really helpful for stress testing source code analysis tools :-) Marc A. Criley, Consultant Quadrus Corporation www.quadruscorp.com