Re: How do I write directly to a memory address?

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Feb 8, 1:27 pm, Hyman Rosen <hyro...@mail.com> wrote:
> On 2/8/2011 3:11 PM, Shark8 wrote:> No, that's not it. What is 'it' is that the C programmers  treated
>
>  > Ada as if it were C and the result was, as expected, bad Ada.
>
> It is my understanding that Ada proponents believe that
> using Ada results in better programs than using C.

First off, I purposely did not say (or even imply) that using
Ada "automagically" makes one a better programmer, or
that it makes the programs themselves better.

Let me put it a different way: pneumatic tires are a pretty
good development; they can absorb shock to some
degree as well as allowing a measure of protection
from damage to the wheels {rim/hub} and in so doing
help minimize the cost of when you eventually run into
some road hazard.... but there is NOTHING preventing
you from going out and letting all the air out of your tires
and experiencing the same wheel-cost as the old
covered-wagons, no?

IOW, Ada could have all the most wonderful features and
helps possible but if one never uses them then they do
no good whatsoever to that person.

> But when presented with a program written in Ada that is not
> demonstrably better, that program is removed from the set
> of Ada programs under consideration by virtue of having
> been written by "C people". That is precisely the "no true
> Scotsman" fallacy.

Again, I was not dismissing any program in itself, or even
class of programs, and therefore the "No True Scotsman"
fallacy CANNOT apply to what I presented.

What is interesting, however, is some of the replies to
shown examples of Ada I've written to those well-versed
in C/C++ but unfamiliar with Ada. If you're interested I
have a LISP interpreter* I would otherwise post to show
some of the the "wows" I've gotten; and I'm not doing
anything too spectacular things like having my
overwriting the S_Expression type's 'read and 'write
attributes so I could do something like:

   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line( "Begin Run:" );
   Open( Input, In_File, Name => "Temp.Txt" );
   Declare
      In_Stream	: Access Ada.Streams.Root_Stream_Type'Class:=
	Ada.Text_IO.Text_Streams.Stream( Input );
      Use LISP;
   Begin
      S_Expression'Read( In_Stream, S );
      -- Here's where EVAL would go.
      S_Expression'Write( Out_Stream, S );
   End;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line( "" );
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line( "End Run." );
   Close( Input );

*Not working, I still have to implement the atomic-level
functions, the special-forms cases {like 'if'}, and the
Eval function.

> > The reverse is less true, I think. If you give an Ada  Programmer
>
>  > a "must do" in C, AND he applied the theory/ideology of Ada
>  > {specifically contract enforcement & rejection/culling of bad
>  > values}, then the result would NOT be "bad C"... would it?
>
> In other words, training in a certain style of programming leads
> to better programs. Sure, that's plausible.

More than plausible. I've had professors able to spot that I'd been
'trained' in Pascal from reading my C-code. "Trained" here actually
being self-taught with little more than the compiler and the user's
manual for the compiler.