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: 103376,449b3383afc55069 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: type names (was Re: Child package: private type and IO) Date: 1998/03/01 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 329899030 References: <6c2r0l$iic$1@madmax.keyway.net> <6cbuat$cg3$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6dcio1$fvo$1@berlin.infomatch.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: 888811250 18440 bpr 206.184.139.132 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-03-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, Matthew Heaney wrote: > In article <6dcio1$fvo$1@berlin.infomatch.com>, blaak@infomatch.com (Ray > Blaak) wrote: > > >>Objects are the memory locations that store a value of a type. > > > >But you are using the word here as a type! (i.e. the set of things that are > >memory locations that store values). > > No. You are confused about what a type is. > > ... stuff I mostly agree with deleted ... > > In Ada, module and type are ORTHOGONAL language features. This really > confuses a lot of people, and I have no idea why. Many programmers began their OO programming with (early) C++, or Smalltalk, or may have read "Object Oriented Software Construction", and consider the conflation of module and type into class to be fundamental. Perhaps Java programmers and "new C++" programmers will have an easier time of it, but I doubt it. OTOH, in some ways modules can be said to have a "type"; the ML family of languages (of which SML and Objective CAML are instances) have module systems in which modules ("structures" in ML) have "signatures" which are loosely like types, and "functors" which map structures to other structures. Ada now provides some of this via generic formal package parameters and null-bodied generic packages. > Do not name an access type Pointer, because access objects are not > pointers. If they were, then Jean Ichbiah would have chosen the keyword > "pointer" instead of "access," right? Funny, one of the first papers on Ada 9X that I read used "_Ptr" to name access types. I guess you should tell the author that he is confused, even though he was technical director of the design team ;-). > >One shouldn't be so afraid to do something different, if one thinks it is an > >improvement. How else can standards get better? > > A bunch of guys from all over the planet with PhDs in computer science > designed the language, and somehow they didn't come up with your "better > idea." Telling, isn't it? If you think it is an improvement, perhaps that > is because there is knowledge that you don't have. A bunch of guys with PhDs from all over the planet think Ada sucks, some of them are very well respected too. Which PhDs are right? Argument from authority is unhelpful; while I agree (mostly) with every guideline you set forth, and found Ray's naming schemes awful, Ray Blaak is right with his final lines. Try things out if you think you have a better way. -- Brian