Re: Who said strong typing is a benefit?

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

steve_H wrote:

> since many Ada programmers mention as one of Ada benefits is its
> strong typing, I thought some here might find the following
> 'interesting' to read.
>
>
> "MATLAB Type Handling
> An important benefit of MATLAB is that users do not have
> to declare variables to be of certain data types,

    [ snipped some of the original text ]

Although Ada is designed to be type-safe, this is not a problem
for anyone who has no need of type-safety.   It is so easy to
circumvent type-safety, if you really want to do that.   We start
with a default of type-safe and simply relax that default as
much as we wish.

More important, it is rare for anyone to have difficulties with
Ada's type model.   Any practical programmer understands
the notion of type and can write code accordingly.  So what
is the problem, then?

More programmers have trouble with the Ada visibility rules
than any other single aspect of the language.   The type model
supports the visibility rules.   With this observation, I include
the accessibility rules, which are simply a variation on
visibility.  In my experience, once programmers understand
the visibility rules and learn to use them to their advantage,
instead of fighting them at every turn, they become comfortable
with Ada and begin to enjoy using it.   The visibility rules
are a benefit of the language design, not a curse, but it is
hard to see that in the early stages of using the language.

Richard Riehle