From: Jonathan Guthrie <jguthrie@brokersys.com>
Subject: Re: Fortran or Ada?
Date: 1998/09/25
Date: 1998-09-25T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6uf1kg$85q$1@news.hal-pc.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 6uenvf$g9a$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com
In comp.lang.ada dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote:
(snippage in re confusing * and **)
> Craig, surely you do not know Ada in writing the above!
> The character * never has syntactic significance other
> than as a multiplication operator, and ** is exponentiation.
> If you mean to write
> A : constant integer := B * 2;
> and you write
> A : constant integer := B ** 2;
> it sure is difficult to see why you would expect a
> diagnostic!!!!
> One could argue that it is unwise to use ** as exponentiation
> precisely because of this one character differentiation, but
> that seems a bit extreme to me!
You know, I am sometimes amazed at the sheer range of computer program
languages that seemed to be designed specifically to avoid common
errors.
A while back, I was involved in a discussion on comp.lang.functional
and one of the proponents of Erlang indicated that a primary feature
of Erlang was that it eliminated the possibility of many common
programmers' errors. This is similar to the point being made here
about Ada.
However, I made the point that (C style) pointers and (again C-style)
assignments in conditionals and such don't seem to cause that much
difficulty with my programs. I've spent much more time tracking down
reversed branches (doing a section of code when a condition of true
when I REALLY want to do it only when the condition is false) and
putting '+' when I REALLY want '-' (or similar) than any of what
people (who all seem to be promoting other languages) seem to consider
the troublesome aspects of C or FORTRAN. I've spent FAR more time
tracking down a single hardware problem masquerading as a software
problem than I have all of the potential problems fixed by the aspects
of Ada's design.
If you can invent a computer program language that finds those sorts
of errors, I will switch to it immediately and never switch to anything
else. Until then, I doubt that switching languages would do very much
to my defect rate.
So, I don't think it's at all far-fetched to consider replacing '**'
with some other character sequence that means exponentiation.
One opinion, worth what you paid for it.
--
Jonathan Guthrie (jguthrie@brokersys.com)
Information Broker Systems +281-895-8101 http://www.brokersys.com/
12703 Veterans Memorial #106, Houston, TX 77014, USA
We sell Internet access and commercial Web space. We also are general
network consultants in the greater Houston area.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-09-25 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 96+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <36068E73.F0398C54@meca.polymtl.ca>
1998-09-22 0:00 ` Fortran or Ada? Gisle S{lensminde
1998-09-22 0:00 ` Jeff Templon
1998-09-22 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-09-22 0:00 ` Corey Minyard
1998-09-22 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-23 0:00 ` Jeff Templon
1998-09-23 0:00 ` Corey Minyard
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Craig Burley
1998-09-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-25 0:00 ` Jonathan Guthrie [this message]
1998-09-26 0:00 ` Craig Burley
1998-09-26 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-26 0:00 ` Craig Burley
1998-09-26 0:00 ` Robert B. Love
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Joel Seidman
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Marc A. Criley
1998-09-24 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-09-24 0:00 ` William Clodius
1998-09-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-25 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-09-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-25 0:00 ` jbs
1998-09-26 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-28 0:00 ` jbs
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Dean F. Sutherland
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Dean F. Sutherland
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Gautier.DeMontmollin
1998-09-29 0:00 ` William B. Clodius
1998-09-30 0:00 ` jbs
1998-09-30 0:00 ` William Clodius
1998-09-30 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-30 0:00 ` jbs
1998-09-30 0:00 ` William Clodius
1998-10-03 0:00 ` Niklas Holsti
1998-10-03 0:00 ` Toon Moene
1998-10-03 0:00 ` Niklas Holsti
1998-10-03 0:00 ` Toon Moene
1998-10-04 0:00 ` Niklas Holsti
1998-10-05 0:00 ` Michel OLAGNON
1998-10-05 0:00 ` Ian St. John
1998-10-05 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-05 0:00 ` Ian St. John
1998-10-06 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-06 0:00 ` James Giles
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Mark A Biggar
1998-10-06 0:00 ` James Giles
1998-10-07 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-07 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Toon Moene
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Jonathan Guthrie
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Ian St. John
1998-10-08 0:00 ` Offtopic Airport Diversion (Was: Fortran or Ada?) Harold Stevens ** PLEASE SEE SIG **
1998-10-08 0:00 ` Ian St. John
1998-10-08 0:00 ` Fortran or Ada? Gary L. Scott
1998-10-05 0:00 ` Richard D Riehle
1998-10-05 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Michel OLAGNON
1998-10-07 0:00 ` Ian St. John
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Dean F. Sutherland
1998-10-02 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-10-02 0:00 ` jbs
1998-10-02 0:00 ` William Clodius
1998-10-03 0:00 ` jbs
1998-10-03 0:00 ` Larry Elmore
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-10-06 0:00 ` Pat Rogers
1998-10-02 0:00 ` Geoff Bull
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Jeff Templon
1998-09-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-25 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-09-30 0:00 ` Daniel Barker
1998-09-30 0:00 ` Lawrence Kirby
1998-10-01 0:00 ` Aaron Crane
1998-10-02 0:00 ` Fortran or Ada or gobbledygook? Wes Groleau
1998-10-05 0:00 ` Fortran or Ada? Terry Devine
[not found] ` <6udre0$ha1$1@nnrp1.dejane <6utg60$h6l$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
1998-10-01 0:00 ` robin_v
1998-09-22 0:00 ` Rakesh Malhotra
1998-09-23 0:00 ` Frank Ecke
1998-09-23 0:00 ` bglbv
1998-09-23 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Richard D Riehle
1998-09-23 0:00 Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96
1998-09-23 0:00 ` Gisle S{lensminde
1998-09-24 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Gisle S{lensminde
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Dean F. Sutherland
1998-09-24 0:00 ` Samuel T. Harris
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1998-09-23 0:00 Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96
1998-09-24 0:00 Walt Brainerd
1998-09-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-25 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-10-05 0:00 Robert I. Eachus
1998-10-05 0:00 robin
1998-10-05 0:00 Condic, Marin D.
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox