Re: Proposal: pragma Assumption

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.tsoh.plus-bug.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

> I don't get it. If you remove the package containing Unimplemented from the 
> program (as you should do in this case), any remaining references will be 
> caught by the compiler as undefined.

I thought that, too, but then considered programmers
who wouldn't mind a "workaround":
 "If that Simplifying_Assumption package is gone away,
  stupid big IT organization, I'll roll my own.
  I don't want their configuration handling to affect
  my coding right now!"
This is not possible to do with a language defined pragma.
Once a pragma is used to express "preliminary implementation",
its language defined semantics will ensure that there is no
simple way to work around finishing your work.
No reference to HR, to quality control, performance control or
team leadership competence is needed.

With a pragma, language semantics can improve work semantics
and quality control, in line with Ada culture maybe.
(Programming discipline for free?)

I can remember too many IFs without completed ELSE, too many
notes about cases to be handled later that would inevitably
make a program confront Murphy's law.
Tools are helpful; if Simplifying_Assumption, a variation of
Assert, becomes language defined, there is a one button
solution to most of these problems.

It's iPhone usability at the development level .-)