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From: adam@irvine.com (Adam Beneschan)
Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...
Date: 1996/08/20
Message-ID: <4vb5st$b5r@krusty.irvine.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 175219381
references: <Pine.GSO.> <4 <4vb399$kt8@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net>
organization: /z/news/newsctl/organization
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.cobol
Date: 1996-08-20T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Craig Franck <clfranck@worldnet.att.net> writes:

 >The point I was tring to make is you can write bad code in any 
 >language. Good programmers and software support are as important
 >as the language. Puting training wheels on a language by being 
 >able to write : FOR I IN Data 'RANGE LOOP
 >                  Put(Data(I), 3);
 >                END LOOP;
 >because programmers can't count, may be helpfull.

I haven't been following this "Thread That Will Not Die", so maybe I
don't understand the context in which this statement occurs.

It seems to me, though, that the poster is referring to 'RANGE as
"training wheels" designed to protect inexperienced programmers from
accidentally typing the wrong loop limit.  This is ridiculous and
shows a complete lack of understanding of software engineering
principles.  The whole purpose of 'RANGE, 'FIRST, 'LAST is for
*maintainability*.  It's there so that if you later decide to change
the bounds of Data, you can do so in ONE PLACE (the place where Data
is declared) without affecting the correctness of the rest of the
program.  

Having the same information in two or more places in the program has
long been recognized as a major source of errors introduced during
maintenance.  That is, if you say

    Data : array (1 .. 3) of whatever;

. . .
    for i in 1 .. 3 loop
       Put (Data (i), 3);
    end loop;

the lower and upper limits (1 and 3) are information that occurs in
two places.  Not a good idea; if you change one and forget to change
the other, your program suddenly doesn't work any more.

In fact, I'd consider an Ada programmer that coded the above loop to
be an inexperienced one.  I've been programming for 20 years, 8 years
in Ada, and I would ALWAYS use the 'RANGE construct that this poster
denigrates.  It is *not* a "training wheel."

                                -- Adam