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Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:57:34 +0100
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.tsoh.plus-bug.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: networking support?
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Date: 2008-12-20T00:57:36+01:00
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Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> This problem is particularly notorious with network
> services.

OK.  (One might wonder, as an aside, why we still have to live
with this mess. Even in C, there is "inline", there is splint
for motivating abstraction, etc.  A C-to-Something translator
where Something forces abstraction, or at least fixes the vagueness
inherent in C data layout, will solve many problems...)

> There is no way to reasonably interface with all this mess from Ada
> [...] you end up with a
> regular C++ library that encapsulates some system services and is used
> from the Ada program.

Granted, some C libraries expose and require the use of internal
data structures, even slippery ones, and very likely a C++ abstraction
will handle the data just like the C compiler.
What remains is a different kind of mess (or fun, depending on
the perspective):  We have to start from some "clever"
traditional C brilliance.  Then chain two languages that somehow
trigger better abstractions. Or that provide more clear cut data
definitions. In a sense, then, the motto of the profession
becomes shrug and preserve, either way.