From: emery@mitre-bedford.arpa (David Emery)
Subject: Re: An Ada Program Does What It Says?
Date: 5 Jan 93 16:52:18 GMT [thread overview]
Message-ID: <EMERY.93Jan5115218@goldfinger.mitre.org> (raw)
The point of Mendal & Bryan (or Bryan & Mendal, depending on volume)
is to illustrate the dark corners of the language. As has been
pointed out, *every* language has dark corners. (Didn't Goedel prove
this...)
One of the big differences between the Ada "culture" and other
"cultures" is the tendency we (Ada-ites) have to make things specific.
This was clear in the POSIX business, where the Ada binding goes out
of its way to completely specify all behaviors, including
implementation-defined or undefined behaviors. The C binding is
(deliberately) silent in many places, with the general caveat of
"anything not specified is undefined."
Therefore it is much easier to find the implementation-defined things
in either the Ada language or POSIX/Ada, because they are explicitly
so stated. It's a heluva lot harder to find such things when they are
not explicitly specified, such as in POSIX/C.
dave
next reply other threads:[~1993-01-05 16:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1993-01-05 16:52 David Emery [this message]
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1993-01-07 19:51 An Ada Program Does What It Says? agate!spool.mu.edu!think.com!enterpoop.mit.edu!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!ai-lab
1993-01-06 21:57 agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state
1993-01-04 19:37 Bjarne Stroustrup
1993-01-04 15:28 agate!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!peruvian.cs.utah.edu!ma
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