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From: "(see below)" <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Avoiding side effects
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:53:57 +0100
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Date: 2008-10-13T22:53:57+01:00
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On 13/10/2008 22:22, in article
d3ea88f3-cb6c-48a2-9661-5cd63fdbf188@l33g2000pri.googlegroups.com, "Adam
Beneschan" <adam@irvine.com> wrote:
... 
> But you're absolutely right.  The most important thing is to learn
> what makes a program readable and maintainable.  Sometimes this just
> takes experience.  But no matter what, dogmas are a very poor

Exactly.

> substitute for this kind of learning and experience.  With a few
> exceptions... I still think "don't ever use ALTER statements" is
> probably a good dogma for COBOL programmers.  The spaghetti-code
> programmers who wrote the old software loved using them, and they
> always made code difficult to follow.  So I guess even the "no dogmas"
> dogma is the kind of dogma that should be avoided...

Nope.
I'm sure there is a good use for ALTER.
I just don't know what it is yet. 8-)

-- 
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk