Re: How do I write directly to a memory address?

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

On 2/9/2011 11:46 AM, KK6GM wrote:
>> I submit that it's all of a piece - it's programmers staying in
>> their comfort zones instead of understanding that custom and style
>> change and should be accommodated, not scorned.
>
> Is that really the main point you took away from the three articles
> (articles about software engineering _education_, let us not forget)?

Yes. If I'm going to believe someone who is claiming that
certain things are wrong and need to be improved, I want
to look at their work to see evidence that it is better
than that of the people they criticize. Instead, I see
people who have had to be dragged kicking and screaming
into modernity, and who haven't completed the trip.

And apropos of JC's comments,
let's take a look at a random bit of GPS source code,
<http://libre2.adacore.com/viewvc/trunk/gps/ada_module/ui/src/ada_naming_editors.ads?view=markup>
<http://libre2.adacore.com/viewvc/trunk/gps/ada_module/ui/src/ada_naming_editors.adb?view=markup>

JC said "I once worked on an Ada project that had been done by C people.
The package specs were badly formatted collections of declarations with
no comments; the developers viewed them as header files that no one would
read. There were minimal comments in the bodies, and everyone was expected
to read the body code to understand how to use the operations."

The module above is certainly neatly formatted. But it contains
minimal comments in the spec or the body. Oddly, the spec contains
comments mostly for procedures which are commented as "shouldn't
be called directly". (Is there no way to express such things in Ada
so that things that shouldn't be called directly can't be called
directly?) I submit that anyone who wishes to understand this
module is going to read the source code of the body. I further
submit that this isn't really unusual.