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: 103376,2afac1a4161c7f35 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) Subject: Re: Distinguishing type names from other identifiers Date: 1998/01/16 Message-ID: <69nt40$q7n@top.mitre.org>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 316538120 References: <884736089.2104295427@dejanews.com> <69lael$90o@top.mitre.org> <01bd2207$18f3fac0$95fc82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford Mass. Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-01-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: > ... everyone should agree ... Dr. Dewar, it is obvious that EVERYONE does not agree with you that indendation rules have ANYTHING to do with quality. Let me make it perfectly clear, that something like indentation which tools can change at anyone's whim with zero effort cannot be something that reduces the cost of software maintenance or the reliability of a development effort. Nor does the addition of competent mavericks to a team hurt that team, unless the politics of the team is aimed somewhere other than in the direction of getting the bugs out of the product. It is okay to espouse your beliefs, but it would be better to permit the existence of other beliefs to co-exist with yours, and not be so absolute as in the above quote phrase. There is a certain level of project where it becomes essential to stop measuring regimentation and volume, and instead measure the things that make software maintenance more expensive. That is, those things that cause the maintainer to spend more time analyzing the impact of changes. As proof that gnat has evolved past the level where regimentation can make it maintainable, we have the decision of ACT that is too expensive to upgrade the current version of gnat for DOS, gnat 3.07, to a later version. Specifically, rather than becoming cheaper and cheaper gnat is becoming more expensive to maintain. It would be worth addressing the fact that, despite using Ada, gnat is becoming more expensive to maintain. Possibly, the only way to make an Ada-95 program more expensive to maintain is to DEFINE quality to be regimentation, and measure that regimentation rather than measuring things that decohese the design and couple the code. How much of the increase in the maintenance expense of gnat is attributable to the philosophy of regimentation of SYNTAX, rather than measuring the semantic problems? This question is worth thinking out seriously, rather than politically. The answer might support your view or other views. But there are many projects that would like to ensure they are measuring the right thing. Certainly, enforcing syntax rules is trivial with the right tools. But reducing the number of references to global variables, making more types limited private, making more variables local, and making more packages pure might take away more bugs in the gnat code than continuing to enforce those syntax rules. It is worth an experiment or two. Mike Brenner