From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c9d5fc258548b22a X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!feeder.news-service.com!news.nobody.at!texta.sil.at!newsfeed01.chello.at!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool4.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:25:19 +0100 From: Georg Bauhaus User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How do I write directly to a memory address? References: <67063a5b-f588-45ea-bf22-ca4ba0196ee6@l11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> <8r86vgFc3uU1@mid.individual.net> <19fh1chm74f9.11cws0j5bckze.dlg@40tude.net> <4d4ff70e$0$6886$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net> <737a6396-72bd-4a1e-8895-7d50f287960e@d28g2000yqc.googlegroups.com> <4d5008a5$0$6879$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net> <4d5031fe$0$6765$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net> <1f229967-d3cf-42b6-8087-c97ee08652f3@i40g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> <4d5110ea$0$7669$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> <1fb3ce45-ffcc-4c1c-8f76-d151975c8425@x1g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> <4d511500$0$7665$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <4d518a90$0$7651$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> Organization: Arcor NNTP-Posting-Date: 08 Feb 2011 19:25:20 CET NNTP-Posting-Host: 270bc9cf.newsspool1.arcor-online.net X-Trace: DXC=OHf]D4>4>E;QbA1[CgMQ00ic==]BZ:af>4Fo<]lROoR1<`=YMgDjhg2D>=kX2P@_e6nc\616M64>:Lh>_cHTX3j=ACNUnFXKl12 X-Complaints-To: usenet-abuse@arcor.de Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:17980 Date: 2011-02-08T19:25:20+01:00 List-Id: On 08.02.11 17:48, Adam Beneschan wrote: > On Feb 8, 2:03 am, Georg Bauhaus > wrote: >> On 2/8/11 10:58 AM, Ludovic Brenta wrote: >> >>>> (c) by single case logic, Ada's type system has not prevented >>>> deaths in Ariane 5 anyway. >> >>> Huh? >> >> You don't even know this? > > Quoting Wikipedia: "As it was an unmanned flight, there were no > victims". What "deaths" are you referring to? I think that's what > Ludovic meant by "Huh?". The C programmers vs the Ada programmers kind of deaths that inevitably happen in those rocket functions that, by the laws of the wrong language, have shown that failure must ensue because we have seen it once. -- You know, they did use Ada in that rocket and it exploded! said some authority and therefore, by Palinian logic, anything other than Ada is better and rockets should not explode above the heads of American people. That's not what we pay our taxes for, for funding a government compiler that makes rockets explode. -- But it was a different rocket. -- Well, I think that if it happened in another rocket, we should be happy that not both of them have made people die. -- They didn't use GNAT either. -- So you are saying that GNAT is not an Ada compiler? They were so proud to use Ada and then the rocket exploded. -- But no one died in Ariane 5. It was unstaffed. -- I think you are dishonest to the American people. They've got a right to learn that using "in" mode parameters in preference over passing copies can kill our astronauts. -- Ariane 5 is a European rocket. -- It lifts off in French Guiana. That's very close to Florida, isn't it? -- This kind of death. Of argument. The birth of rhetoric. Things are made up for the sake of argument. Which is why I mixed several perfectly comparable rockets: they all look the same, as we all can see. Too much of this happens in language comparisons. It is very good to learn about traceable cases of the danger inherent in some language, such as using mutable scalars from the largest possible scope they can have inside functions (parameters in C; better in Ada?). I wish they were collected in some unbiased public wiki, together with a kind of cost analysis, metaphorical or real, of the observed effects. Wouldn't this be a nice addition to the Style Guide? A chapter on Bug Avoidance Techniques (BAT)?. I bet Les Hatton would find this chapter to be in line with his evaluation of style guides.