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NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:30:43 -0600
From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Char type verification
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Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:30:28 +0100
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Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:7537
Date: 2006-11-17T19:30:28+01:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Koray Erkan writes:
> The challenge was purposefully simple and messy so that you didn't get
> bogged down with the theoretical intricacies of a major one.
>
> I guess this is not the way people use comp.lang.ada. Which is why I
> dropped a resentful - and regrettably not too gallant - closing note.

I think the incident is really a culture clash stemming from Ada's
nature as a high level language, its strictess, and its emphasis on
readability.

High level means that Ada allows you to think in terms of your problem
(uppercase and lowercase letters) rather than the solution (bit
patterns and bit masks).

Strictness means that a letter should not be mistaken for a number.

Emphasis on readability means that an experienced Ada programmer will
write a program that makes it very clear to the reader what the
problem is, and how the program solves it.

So, you came here and asked "how do I implement this in Ada?" and
experienced Ada programmers retorted, "but what is your problem?".  I
am not at all surprised that both sides failed to understand the
other.  This very newsgroup has countless examples along the lines of:

C programmer: What is the string terminator character in Ada?
Ada programmer: there is none because you don't need one.
C programmer: huh?

Lisp programmer: How do I keep track of a string's length in Ada?
Ada programmer: like all arrays, strings know their bounds and you can
query them using 'First, 'Last and 'Length.  But the bounds are
immutable.  If you want variable-length strings you need
Unbounded_String.
Lisp programmer: OK, thanks.  BTW, all objects are immutable in a
functional language :)

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.