Re: Build language with weak typing, then add scaffolding later to strengthen it?

[jan.de.kruyf@gmail.com]

On Friday, May 22, 2015 at 7:57:23 PM UTC+2, Simon Wright wrote:

> 
> When I was translating STM32F4 headers into Ada, I was able to convert
> the -fdump-ada-spec generated uint32_t into Interfaces.Unsigned_32,
> which seemed to work very well (though exceedingly thin, of course!)
> 
> Bit of sed script:
> 
> # Unsigned types in parameters/record components
> s/stdint_h.uint(8|16|32|64)_t/Interfaces.Unsigned_\1/g

Well Simon I would never feel bad about it. I bought myself a big bottle of variable-type stripper for doing the kernel module interface. I find life gets much easier that way.And the code more understandable. In the end it all means nothing, it is often just a whim of the coder.

But to get serious: Yes they did mean something when the people first had the problem seeing the difference between 32bit code and 64bit code, little endian and big endian etc. But in Ada the only time it bites you is when you do low level ethernet stuff, and even then there are some tricks to keep it all straight without going to the extremes of having 5 different type names for the same thing.

j.