Re: Misconception about Ada?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Ted Dennison wrote:
> In article <Pine.BSF.4.21.0102121155250.19870-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>,
> Brian Rogoff says...
> >When I was an an undergrad it meant someone who got explored tunnels and
> >buildings, often bypassing security. A computer hacker was someone who
> >explored computers, and built things, it was pretty much positive. Here's
> 
> Interesting difference. I assume you picked this up from your Computer Science
> department?

I was a Math guy. Hacking was part of the school's history and culture. Of 
course, there was a fictional Alyssa P. Hacker in the undergrad CS textbook 
and she was smarter than Ben Bitdiddle (who was a low level kind of guy) 
so I guess it's better to be a (Lisp) hacker than a bit diddler. 

> >...  I think Ada is an even better "hacking" (and I use this in the sense
> >you seem to be using it, coding with little design) language than C, since
> >Ada's safety measures allow you to hack away with less debugging effort.
> 
> *Nothing* saves the "hacker" (my sense), short of a transfer. :-) However, I'd
> think Ada would be particularly annoying for them, as the typing system requires
> a certain amount of thinking ahead in order to prevent you from painting
> yourself into a corner.

Ever play speed chess? It's rather different from a regular chess game
which is rather different than postal chess. I would argue that "typeful" 
programming is even more valuable in rapid development. Once you've got
the basics of Ada down, it's pretty fast to write since you don't debug as 
much as in C. 

> In fact, we have in the past heard from a "hacker" in

Prototyping, and rapid development doesn't mean "absolutely no" design. 
Prototyping, rapid development, etc. in Ada is still typeful. When you
make sweeping changes in Ada code the type checking saves you a lot of
work. I think there are usually better languages for this, but if we
compare with C and C++ my experience is that programmer "velocity" in Ada 
can be greater.

-- Brian