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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,c9d5fc258548b22a X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!novia!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!news-out.readnews.com!postnews7.readnews.com!not-for-mail Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:15:53 -0500 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; 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> <4d5008a5$0$6879$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net> <4d5031fe$0$6765$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net> <1f229967-d3cf-42b6-8087-c97ee08652f3@i40g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> <4d51169e$0$7657$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> <1bnp0pw1c8r5b$.guxc48qweiwe.dlg@40tude.net> <1ju2bba947c1h.y05qev0wjx2t.dlg@40tude.net> <25z0jyvibze7.1pi559yfki5lo$.dlg@40tude.net> <611bc17f-753c-48bb-9c28-dc5e810085dc@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <4d52c3c5$0$19486$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <0be28ab4-84dc-4245-b6f7-264baaed776d@8g2000prt.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: <0be28ab4-84dc-4245-b6f7-264baaed776d@8g2000prt.googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <4d52cc67$0$19481$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 0d3ce24e.usenet-news.net X-Trace: DXC=T2c]8ED\=X`SIJ?ne=Ml\fQFZ3T]GPM]gmX0AG3X_jUo^k]aZDi0TlbVjKk:Lk^BNacR12TN^Bg7nD`N:W2l626ffKQ88eCJkXf X-Complaints-To: abuse@usenet-news.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:17098 Date: 2011-02-09T12:15:53-05:00 List-Id: 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, 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.