Re: In-Out Parameters for functions

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

That is an issue I think we Ada fans often get caught up in. "Well, in 
*theory* an Ada compiler could do blah blah blah...." But if, in 
*practice*, none of them do and none of them have any plans to do so, 
then effectively "The Language" doesn't do it. A good example is when 
people post here asking "Does Ada have garbage collection?" We tell them 
the standard allows it, but nobody does it. Do they care that the 
standard allows it if they can't get a compiler that does it? The same 
goes for other issues like efficiency. A feature might theoretically be 
implementable in an efficient manner, but if nobody does it well in 
practice, you get the accusation "Ada is slow..." and its hard to argue 
against.

There is a real distinction between what the standard says and what 
might exist by way of implementations, but for most practical purposes, 
average developers don't make that distinction. Hence, there is a de 
facto "standard" which cannot be ignored.

MDC


Stephen Leake wrote:
> 
> 2) Does anyone have a real example of a compiler taking advantage of
>    the evaluation order freedom to speed up a program?

> 
> I have not heard anyone respond to 2), which is supposedly the reason
> the freedom is there. If no compiler actually takes advantage of it,
> it's not worth having.
> 

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