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From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: Side-effect arithmetic again [was: Ada ... in embedded systems]
Date: 1996/03/26
Message-ID: <DovoDs.3ML@world.std.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 144186863
references: <31499D21.1DA6@escmail.orl.mmc.com>
 <827432438.26126@assen.demon.co.uk> <4ivnr9$86o@dayuc.dayton.saic.com>
 <4j7dcl$dfu@dayuc.dayton.saic.com>
organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-03-26T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <4j7dcl$dfu@dayuc.dayton.saic.com>,
John G. Volan  <John_Volan@ccmail.dayton.saic.com> wrote:
>...To me, the
>extra 6 characters needed to type in "Increment" and "Decrement" are a
>triviality, compared with the guarantee this gives me that my code will
>be understood by anyone with a working knowledge of the English
>language....

Pardon my saying so, but that's complete nonsense.  You can't understand
Ada programs without understanding the semantics of Ada, whether or not
your identifiers are verbose or terse.  Furthermore, it is completely
irrelevant whether random folks off street can understand your Ada code.
What matters is whether a professional programmer, who knows the
language, can understand the code well enough to modify it without
breaking it.

By the way, a C programmer would laugh at this whole conversation.  The
C programmer wants to say foo++, and we Ada folks start rambling on
about generic instantatiations and other complicated gobbledegook.
Sheesh.

- Bob