Re: Bit manipulation

[gdemont@my-deja.com]

> > programming; therefore hiding the availability of modular
> types
> > _is_ a disservice.
>
> I simply disagree, I am talking about lots of code that I
> see written by professional programmers who do not understand
> how to do things in Ada. One of the functions of CLA should
> be to try to show people how things are done in Ada.

The best way would be to write that there are such and such
ways, and, as you wrote, ask for details about the problem
to implement. Of course, also say that such method is safer
than such one which is maybe faster to program. But concealing
a feature for moral reasons is a big disservice to the language,
doubly: 1) it make believe (here) that C is necessary for low-level
elementary operations; 2) the interfacing is always fragile
and make ask: "finally, why did we code the rest in Ada ?".

> The idea that being an adult guarantees that people know
> what they are doing, and that they know the right semantic
> level to frame their questions at, is misguided.

I did not mean that if they are adults, they are good programmers.
Simply, a mediocre programming will be at least much more reliable
(if not safe) in Ada. In various Ada forums/lists, I see sometimes
a part of code coming even from "safety-critical" area, where
the guy believes that a feature (typically modular types) doesn't
exist in Ada, then uses unchecked_conversion on pointers and/or
a complicated interface with a "@a#$s++{--x;{}}" - like piece of C.
In addition, the code doesn't work and the guy concludes that Ada
is really useless (instead of seeing that _he_ is hopeless ;-).

G.


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