Re: Proposal: pragma Assumption

[anon@anon.org (anon)]

If you do a little research you will find that Ada is different.  Ada is 
special it help the programmer become a better programmer unlike 
"C/C++" or FORTRAN, or other languages. JAVA tries to teach the 
programmer but SUN keep listening to the bad programmers and alters 
the language. The majority of JAVA programmers state that the 
"deprecated" error is one of the major complaints of the JAVA 
language. Every newer version has some common used routines that 
have been altered or replaced that causes this error, which cases the 
program to be re-written.

For Ada, there is very little in the form of trade-offs. This is 
stated in the RM and the programmers that primarily use Ada likes 
it that way, actually we wish it had no trade-offs, but that hard 
to make it reality. But the "Ravenscar" concept does helps a great 
deal. 

Now, there are a lot of "C/C++" people who come to Ada and complain 
that Ada wont let them create code their way, they want to dirty Ada 
up like other languages, why should we or the Ada's RM let them. 

Plus, the concepts of "Portability", "Compatibility" and others are 
built into Ada and are stated in the RM. So, any change or patch that 
destroys this should be looked as an attempt to "Kill Ada". Because 
your patch to the compiler would allow people to violate the RM it 
should be abandon.  One reason is your patch could cause students in 
classes to fail the course, causing the colleges to complain and stop 
using Ada.  Which will inturn make it harder for companies to use 
Ada.  Aka the "DEATH OF ADA" but that's what "C/C++" 
programmers wants, the "DEATH OF ADA!"

All because you want to modify the language instead of learning and 
use an alternative way. that the RM and Ada requires you to learn 
and use.

And as for the 

>> The only "fix" for actively malicious programmers is firing them.

I say that too nice.  Put that programmer in JAIL for LIFE without  
access to a computer or the internet!

In <fa739658-0547-4fe8-b200-609004627c4a@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Santiago_Urue=F1a?= <suruena@gmail.com> writes:
>> Yes, it is; just change the build script to pass the right compiler
>> option.
>>
>> The only "fix" for actively malicious programmers is firing them.
>>
>Every language feature involves some trade offs. Is it worth adding
>the "overriding" keyword at the cost of introducing a backwards
>incompatibility and requiring to change the lexer and the syntax
>processing of current compilers, furthermore if the same can be
>checked using formal annotations and a external ASIS tool? I'm not
>comparing the utility of pragma Assumption with the overriding keyword
>(which is a great adition IMHO), but the costs of implementing them to
>a compiler are neither the same: it is fairly cheap to add another
>pragma so similar to pragma Assert. And the results would be relative
>high considering the costs: adding support to a common programming
>practice, in a standardized way, and with less risks than nowadays.
>
>So, should it be added to Ada? I don't know, that's why I'm asking
>here: first to the Ada community, to know whether programmers think it
>is useful, and after that to the ARG who will decide if it should be
>added or not to the language. The first step wasn't bad: nobody of the
>(few) people who replied said that he wouldn't use it (but a lot of
>answers were more focused on achieving the same effects without adding
>more features to the language). But I think I will follow Randy's
>advice, creating a patch for the future GNAT GPL 2008 (let's see if it
>is really easy to implement or not... :-) and distributing it here.
>
>Cheers,
>
>--
>Santiago Urue=F1a-Pascual
>Technical University of Madrid (UPM)