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: 1094ba,9f0bf354542633fd X-Google-Attributes: gid1094ba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,d901a50a5adfec3c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Jonathan Guthrie Subject: Re: Fortran or Ada? Date: 1998/09/25 Message-ID: <6uf1kg$85q$1@news.hal-pc.org>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 394605098 References: <36068E73.F0398C54@meca.polymtl.ca> <6u8r5o$aa4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6uenvf$g9a$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Organization: Information Broker Systems Internet Services Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-09-25T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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.