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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,abd120a1d5231d28 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book Date: 1996/11/19 Message-ID: <56rhb5$rua$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 197379593 references: <3290C33B.1772@cse.eng.lmu.edu> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia nntp-posting-user: ok newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Ray Toal writes: >My experience has been totally the opposite. Students can adapt >easily to different styles. Could you send some of your students here, PLEASE? I could do with students like that, really I could. >Consistency is a big deal - you wouldn't wnat to sprinkle lots of >underscores in C code because the standard library avoids them, This is argument is riddled with flaws. (1) Many people *DO* use lots of underscores in C code. Just about everyone who hasn't been brainwashed into using "Hungarian" notation, anyway. (2) The standard library does NOT avoid underscores. Here is a partial list of identifiers in the ISO standard C library that contain underscores: FLT_ROUNDS FLT_RADIX FLT_DIG FLT_EPSILON FLT_MANT_DIG FLT_MAX FLT_MAX_10_EXP FLT_MAX_EXP FLT_MIN FLT_MIN_10_EXP FLT_MIN_EXP DBL_DIG DBL_EPSILON DBL_MANT_DIG DBL_MAX DBL_MAX_10_EXP DBL_MAX_EXP DBL_MIN DBL_MIN_10_EXP DBL_MIN_EXP LDBL_MANT_DIG LDBL_EPSILON LDBL_DIG LDBL_MIN_EXP LDBL_MIN LDBL_MIN_10_EXP LDBL_MAX_EXP LDBL_MAX LDBL_MAX_10_EXP CHAR_BIT MB_LEN_MAX UCHAR_MAX USHRT_MAX UINT_MAX ULONG_MAX CHAR_MAX SCHAR_MAX SHRT_MAX INT_MAX LONG_MAX CHAR_MIN SCHAR_MIN SHRT_MIN INT_MIN LONG_MIN LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME decimal_point thousands_sep int_curr_symbol currency_symbol mon_decimal_point mon_thousands_sep mon_grouping positive_sign negative_sign int_frac_digits frac_digits p_cs_precedes p_sep_by_space n_cs_precedes n_sep_by_space p_sign_posn n_sign_posn jmp_buf sig_atomic_t SIG_DFL SIG_ERR SIG_IGN va_list va_start va_end va_arg ptrdiff_t size_t wchar_t FILENAME_MAX FOPEN_MAX fpos_t L_tmpnam SEEK_CUR SEEK_END SEEK_SET EXIT_FAILURE EXIT_SUCCESS MB_CUR_MAX RAND_MAX div_t ldiv_t clock_t time_t tm_sec tm_min tm_hour tm_mday tm_mon tm_year tm_wday tm_yday tm_isdst That's 104 identifiers, which is less than a half of the total, but not a _lot_ less than a half. (3) The C standard actually reserves identifiers beginning with "_" for use in the library. (4) If your library uses one convention, and you do not have a decent package system, closely imitating the library conventions is the LAST thing you want to do because it increases the risk of accidental name collision. >but you like to in Ada because its standard library is full of them. As explained above, this is *not* a good reason, and it is *not* the reason why I use underscores in Ada identifiers. I use spelled out words separated with underscores for the reasons given in the AQ&S guidelines. >I've never seen a student complain about formatting styles, but then >I've only been teaching 11 years. Well, I've been teaching 7 years, and the students complained every year. They don't see why they should lay *their* code out to please *someone else*, even if the someone else is the person who has to mark their ruddy code. This year, marking about 40 2nd year students, I found that _none_ of them followed the layout rules they were told they would be marked down for not following, and only _one_ of them even came close. >By the way, I've said before, the content in Feldman's book is >first-rate and it's the best book I've seen, and the non-standard >formatting doesn't have to be a big deal at all. Of *COURSE* it is not a big deal to someone who already fully agrees with it! YOU have students who - don't mind following the style you give them - do have trouble knowing which are the keywords WE have students who - DO mind very much following the style we give them - do NOT have trouble knowing which are the keywords They know because we TELL them, and give them lectures telling them what they mean. If a student knows what "if then else end if" _means_ s/he doesn't need to be reminded that "if", "then", "else", "end" are special words. Is it really _possible_ for a student to remember how if-statements work without remembering that "if" is a special word? And for die-hard "students who can remember if statements still need to be reminded that if is a keyword" believers, why, putting "if" in lower case when non-keywords don't begin with lower case letters is a perfectly functional reminder. -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.