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From: rav@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (++           robin)
Subject: Re: next "big" language?? (disagree)
Date: 1996/06/05
Message-ID: <4p37cs$efi@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 158544269
references: <4p0fdd$4ml@news.atlantic.net>
 <4p1l65$35qi@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de>
organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.ada
nntp-posting-user: rav
Date: 1996-06-05T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


	ucaa2385@alpha1.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de (Peter Hermann) writes:

	>Kurt Johmann (johmann@moal.com) wrote:
	>: Programming languages are almost completely subjective, because the only

	>I strongly disagree

	>: minds apparently like that kind of enforced discipline (masochist types,
	>: perhaps :-), but to my mind it was a build-your-own-straightjacket-and-
	>: wear-it kind of approach to programming.

	>the opposite is true: a professional is always thankful for every
	>hint from the compiler or environment for potential errors.
	>Working with languages of the past like Fortran or C is true
	>masochism. I have worked on very large systems in Fortran
	>(one was a half million source lines of code, the other 300_000 sloc)
	>and we had to run the systems on every hardware brand.
	>I can see no advantage to allow e.g. a memory overwrite error,
	>by accident, or, e.g. an outside range value at run time or
	>a wrong subroutine call due to bad parameter profile.

	>When I decide, as a programmer, that a peculiar type or
	>variable may have a value in the range from 1 to 9, can you please
	>explain me why it should be useful to assign a value of 10 or
	>4711 or -1234?

---Why, someone inevitably decides that the range is going
to be something different!  Users are apt to change their minds.
Then someone has to go in and modify the program.  Or, someone
overlooked a limit, and put in a limit one smaller than that
actually required.  Again, someone has to go in and find where
that limit is, and change it.

	>I will justify the value of that freedom in your favour:
	>This has the big advantage that the typical Fortran, C, or C++
	>programmer being not immediately aware of an erroneous code
	>is happy to catch the error all-day-long and when the day is done,
	>he is proud to have found this bug and fully convinced to 
	>have fulfilled his work of the day.

	>In contrast, a poor Ada programmer does not have this fun:
	>a potential error is revealed at the moment of the very first 
	>compilation/execution. What a pity! No fun at all ;-(

---Oh how wonderful if this were so!  If it were true,
all our programming difficulties would be over.

Alas, it's just another pipe dream.