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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: Ehud Lamm Subject: Re: Is there a language that Dijkstra liked? (was: Re: Software landmines (loops)) Date: 1998/10/27 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 405486189 References: <6rf59b$2ud$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <70lrnv$mrp@netline.jpl.nasa.gov> <362F1906.B10E7F95@erols.com> <713p5s$ebb$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Organization: The hebrew University of Jerusalem Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-10-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 27 Oct 1998 dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote: > The claim is different, it does not say always, just that people often have > the experience of struggling with the compiler, and then when they get out > all the compiler errors, things work first time. The other day I put in a > rather complex change to GNAT affecting many units (a change to optionally > allow debugging of the expanded -gnatdg source code). There were many compile > errors the first time around, but when all of them were fixed, this quite > tricky feature did indeed work first time -- very pleasing. > Mazel Tov. The point is, that getting this help for the language depends itself on how well you understand the problem domain, and the language features. I have some student with C background, that simply insist (though I told them many times not to) on using Integer all over the place. Now when an error occurs, which makes a variable which has to be a positive number into a negative one - the error isn't caught and is propagated all over the place. Since they still think in C, they think this is a problem with not using enough input error checking etc. It is hard to make them grasp the fact that it is a TYPE USAGE error. To make them see that using the right type would have eliminated cases where their code produces bogus results. This is to iterate my point, that it all boils down to whether the programmer knows how to use the language and understands the problem he is trying to solve. Ehud Lamm mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il