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,
	MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,c7ea1cb7a2beb2ee
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: Disallowing Pre-Defined Operations
Date: 2000/03/18
Message-ID: <8b0p33$afd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 599297747
References: <8a9eeg$qtv$1@newpoisson.nosc.mil>
 <8ababr$c3u$1@wanadoo.fr><8afhed$f9v$1@newpoisson.nosc.mil>
 <wcc8zzop2ib.fsf@world.std.com> <8aoifb$49f$1@newpoisson.nosc.mil>
 <38D001D7.4D6E4284@averstar.com> <38D013EF.1F431E34@cadence.com>
 <38D15537.B06CA311@earthlink.net> <38D2A073.A30FF041@cadence.com>
 <38D2ACA9.84FBD9F6@earthlink.net>
X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I)
X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x28.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14
Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy.
X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat Mar 18 20:31:31 2000 GMT
X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-03-18T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <38D2ACA9.84FBD9F6@earthlink.net>,
  Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> That would have saved at least one space probe.  (By that here
> I mean the automatic conversion of units.)


If you are talking about the Mars probe, that is unconvincing.
As you know if you have read the details, the issue was simply
that the value was entered in the wrong units. No feature in
a language could have prevented this. If the programmer had
been alert enough to worry about this happening and use some
kind of typed units aware input, then the entire problem would
not have occured, after all a sufficient fix here would simply
have been to make it super-clear what units were expected.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.