From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,38159b1b5557a2e7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-01-26 14:07:44 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cyclone.bc.net!news.uunet.ca!nf3.bellglobal.com!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor References: <400BDB7C.40100@noplace.com> <400D2150.6000705@noplace.com> <400E72F9.8060501@noplace.com> <100upo7ln5e3k59@corp.supernews.com> <400FC8E8.2040100@noplace.com> <4011127C.4030801@noplace.com> <101377e54car5cc@corp.supernews.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:53:29 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.223.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1075153957 198.96.223.163 (Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:52:37 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:52:37 EST Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4840 Date: 2004-01-26T16:53:29-05:00 List-Id: Jeffrey Carter wrote: > Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote: > >> #if sizeof(int) == 16 > > Ah, yes, 128-bit integers. Of course, this is not an issue in Ada, since > we declare appropriate numeric types. Oops! Substitute 4 or 8 for 16! >> And what I find amusing is that except for a few that >> appreciate this issue, we've heard of every ugly >> work-around possible, rather than face the issue >> square in the eye. This is just my opinion mind you, >> and perhaps small things amuse me ;-) > > As someone who has faced the issue and never used a preprocessor, but > has had to read code that does, I find a good design that hides the > dependencies to be far more readable. Of course this is to be "preferred". > Eachus has also faced the issue > without using a preprocessor, with similar results. As the ARM says, Ada > emphasizes "program readability over ease of writing". Preprocessors do > the opposite. And two people's experience does not equate to "everyone's" ;-) > Preprocessors are a coder's solution; information hiding is a software > engineer's solution. Perhaps to the question, "Do you like debugging?" > which is very accurate at distinguishing coders from software engineers, > we should add, "Do you like preprocessors?" As said before, I prefer a portable platform neutral code as much as the next guy. But when you start writing bindings and such that must bind to _many_ different situations, this simply becomes impractical. -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://ve3wwg.tk