Re: What exactly is the licensing situation with GNAT?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 10:38:17 +0000 (UTC), Stan Mills wrote:

> On 2014-11-14, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
>> On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 09:02:49 +0000 (UTC), Stan Mills wrote:
>>
>>> On 2014-11-14, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 13 Nov 2014 17:36:06 -0800, Hubert wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That is a point that I have been contemplating for a while now but in 
>>>>> conjunction with Object Oriented Programming. When I look back at my 
>>>>> career I realize that I became lazier and lazier in terms of designing 
>>>>> before programming with the advent of OOP. I think OOP is designed to to 
>>>>> just that: 
>>>>
>>>> Hmm, actually OOD and OOP require more upfront design than traditional
>>>> procedural approach. Ad-hoch subprograms are much easier and quicker stuff
>>>> than ad-hoc type + subprograms (=class) with thinking about possible
>>>> inheritance etc.
>>> 
>>> That's if you are responsible for the whole thing or care about doing it properly.
>>> 
>>> The way OO is used today all the real work is expected to have already been
>>> done by the class library writers and the "coder" just cuts and pastes his
>>> way to the end of the program. Next!
>>
>> This is how everything is done today. Certainly it is not OO's fault or
>> OO's feature.
> 
> Oh, I beg to differ. Sun certainly dumbed down programming when they
> designed Java. It's about making unqualified people "productive" and the
> best way to do that is for qualified people to write as much code as
> possible for unqualified people to use. The primary feature of OO in
> practice is the huge set of class libraries to reduce the amount of future
> coding as much as possible to simple cut and paste of existing bad code.

Well, and the alternative would be? To re-implement everything each time?
Actually, the maturity of an engineering discipline is measured by the
level of reuse of standardised solutions and components.

> The
> only thing a regular programmer can't write in Java or C++ today is
> something that doesn't already have a class library to do it for him.

Maybe. In this context, can the regular programmer do anything better with
any of competing paradigms:

1. Procedural
2. Functional
3. Relational
 
I bet, that anybody is far better off with OO than with any from the above.

>> On the contrary, OO, specifically the concepts of inheritance and
>> instances, addresses software-reuse, which is exactly the opposite to the
>> cut and paste approach.
> 
> That's the theory. But in practice, having all the hard stuff written
> already just promotes cutting and pasting of a different color. The code
> that *uses* those classes is normally not reusable. That's what is cutting
> and pasting. It's been shoved down a level or two.

Maybe. But, again, what would be better?

As a simple example consider Ada's design of, say, Ada.Streams. This is an
OO design. The type Root_Stream_Type is as tagged as it could be.

Now, take either of the paradigms #1, #2, #3 and outline a better design of
streams. Could you?

> Don't try and impose your sense of rigor and order on chaos and think
> everybody works according to sound software engineering practice ;-)
[...]

But this is not an OO problem. The problem is with CS as a whole and with
missing software market. You need two things for having a decent
engineering discipline, that is a sound science (CS is trash) and a working
economical stimulus rewarding quality products and punishing swindlers (SW
market is ruined).

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de