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From: Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: _Type vs no _Type
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Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:14:56 -0400
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Date: 2010-11-03T08:14:56-04:00
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Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> writes:

> I _think_ that Jeffrey's point is that, given weapons such as
> broadsword, catapult, torpedo you might write C like
>
>    typedef enum {BROADSWORD, CATAPULT, TORPEDO} Weapon;
>    void attackUsing(Weapon weapon);
>
> and rather than write this in Ada
>
>    type Weapon_Type is (Broadsword, Catapult, Torpedo);
>    procedure Attack_Using (Weapon : Weapon_Type);
>
> it would be better to say\
>
>    type Weapon is (Broadsword, Catapult, Torpedo);
>    procedure Attack (Using : Weapon);
>

Yes, this summarizes the argument.

The core of the argument is about what metric to use for "better". Those
on the _Type side say the first choice is "better", because it requires
trivial thought both for writing and reading, and leads to different
programmers making the same choice for names.

Those on the "no _type" side say the second choice is better, because
better names are better, and _type is "just noise".

The third choice is:

package RPG is

   type Weapon is (Broadsword, Catapult, Torpedo);
   procedure Attack (Weapon : RPG.Weapon);

end RPG;

That was not introduced until after the two camps were firmly
established. I actually think this third choice is more in the spirit of
Ada than either of the other two. I've used it in a couple small
projects, but my main projects are firmly committed to the _Type
convention.

Consistent conventions are _far_ more important than any reasons
supporting _type vs no _type.

-- 
-- Stephe