Re: Ada95 Strengths/Weaknesses.

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <7spd4c$9ic2@news.cis.okstate.edu>,
  dvdeug@x8b4e53cd. (David Starner) wrote:
> This has nothing to do with what I was talking about. In C++,
I
> can write class BigInt, assign integers to it and pass it to
templates
> expecting numbers. In fact, I can sed s/int/BigInt/g and add
include "bigint.h"
> to the top of all the files, and the programs will run the
same (provided,
> of course, that BigInt follows the same semantics as int.) In
Ada, I can't
> write a template that expects a integer type and pass a BigInt
to it. I
> can't assign to it from universal integer. In Ada, BigInt
can't masquarade
> as a number.

Why not use a private generic type, and pass in a generic
package containing the operators to be used (i.e. the
realization of the signature for the type), seems quite
straightforward. A little more work than in the C++ case,
but you get a lot for this extra work (type safety and the
contract model for generics).


>
> Frankly, for all your scoffing at it, many people like and use
MI. From
> a programmer's prospective, not having MI may be a big
disadvantage.

As I asked before, let's see examples.

> I did point this features out as experimental.

I don't regard it as experimental. It is well defined, fully
standardized, and fairly widely used. I just think that it is
poorly designed that's all.



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