Re: Type casting question

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

In article <83tdjp$hts$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  reason67@my-deja.com wrote:
> 1. While this is valid in Ada 95, as you pointed out, it is
really not
> the best way to do it. No Ada 95 programmer would consider
that as a
> real solution for modeling 5 bits because mod types give you
much more.
> However, it was the only way to do it in Ada 83.

Actually it is not at ALL true that "no Ada 95 programmer would
consider that as a real solution", because in practice there
are many people using Ada 95 who have not yet learned all the
new Ada 95 stuff. Yes, there are some people still stuck using
Ada 83, but they will usually identify that in their posts, and
they most certainly SHOULD identify that, because as I said
earlier, Ada means Ada 95, and that is the assumption we
generally make in this newsgroup!

> 2. I recently changed jobs in October (I am an Ada Contract
Engineer,
> I do that often and have a pretty diverse experience in the US
Ada
> Marketplace) and in the US, the majority of the Ada jobs that
were
> advertised or that recruiters talked to me about were still
using Ada
> 83.

There are plenty of people using Ada 95 these days! Indeed many
of the old Ada 83 compilers are no longer supported.

> Given these 2 points, in my experience and the context of the
question
> asked, I assumed it was Ada 83 and gave/would have given an
Ada 83
> solution.
>
> Do you understand what I am talking about now?

Yes, but it's usually a bad idea to assume Ada 83 in any
situation like this.


> > The notion that Ada means Ada 95 is not an invention of the
> > list, it is the formal position of ISO. Once a new standard
> > comes out, the name refers ONLY to the current standard!
>
> While, technically, that may be true, in the market place job
are
> advertised in the USA as Ada or Ada 95. If a recruiter tells
me about an
> Ada job, it has always been (in my experience) an Ada 83 job.
If the job
> is Ada 95, then that is specifically stated. People I have
worked with
> in the Ada 83 world refer to Ada 83 as simply "Ada". People I
have
> worked with in the Ada 95 world refer to the two languages as
Ada 83 and
> Ada 95.

THings are changing rapidly, the kind of environment you talk
about (where Ada still means only Ada 83) is definitely getting
to be the minority case. I have no idea why the jobs
opportunities you are interacting with are primarily Ada 83,
there are lots of openings for good Ada 95 programmers!

> Perhaps your experience is different, but I do not connsider
ISO's
> position on what can and can not be called Ada to be nearly as
relevent
> as what people are actually doing.


Well we definitely need to educate here, and the FAQ that
is being prepared now will clarify the convention that on this
newsgroup Ada means Ada as defined by the current ISO/ANSI
standard, and if you want to talk about Ada 83, you need to
say so!


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