Re: Need advice: Enumerate or not

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message news:<3CE2A23D.850BA244@acm.org>...

> To summarize, enumeration types are easier to read but require writing
> more code. Dispatching (OOP) is harder to read but requires less coding.

Not by any means universally true, depends upon the situation

> Ada has as an explicit design goal of emphasizing ease of reading over
> ease of writing. Thus Rogers' statements support the claim that
> dispatching is not in the spirit of Ada.

If meant as a general statement, this is a very peculiar claim.

The real rule in Ada is use the appropriate design to make the code as easy
as possible to read *and* maintain. Sometimes dynamic dispatching meets this
criterion, sometimes it fails. 

Those who insist on using dispatching and extended types for everything doom
themselves to write rubbish code that is hard to read and hard to maintain in
some situations.

Those who absolutely refuse to use dispatching and type extension ever doom
themselves to the same fate.

Why is it in the PL area that people get so absolute. Very odd!