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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada student homework ?
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 05:11:18 GMT
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In article <8ucfqf$a56$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> I'm with Chad on this one. Pedantic people may be an
> aggrevation to deal with in personal conversation. We
> certianly wouldn't choose Dr. Dewar t be the chief
> Arab-Israeli negotiator.

Actually you might be surprised. I have had a lot of experience
in very difficult diplomatic negotations in my roles as
chair-person at NYU, and other administrative positions,
and with that kind of hat on, I am actually pretty effective
as a negotiator.

But when it comes to software, there is no room for wooly
negotation and vague experimentation in my book. Computers
and compilers are not people whose feelings need to be
carefully considered :-)

For me, one of the many criteria for a strong programmer is
that you totally understand the tools you are using. As I
said in an earlier thread, when it comes to a complex language
like C++ or F90 or Ada, or Java for that matter, the way to
achieve this is to keep things simple, so that you *do* clearly
understand what you are doing at all times.

I often find people who are so accustomed to writing approximate
code and bashing it into shape, that they simply cannot imagine
the clean room approach in which developers are never allowed
to run their code, and even less can they believe that this
approach works well with programmers who know what they are
doing.

So if insisting on this kind of awareness of details of the
language you are using is pedantry (it's not quite the way
I would use the word), then I consider a pedantic viewpoint
essential


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