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From: Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why
 it collapsed and died)
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Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 20:11:31 GMT
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Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63526 comp.object:63205
 comp.lang.ada:37195
Date: 2003-05-11T20:11:31+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Robert I. Eachus wrote:
>     Shuffle(Deck, Gen);
> 
> It is really, really hard to have bugs in code that is as unsubtle as 
> that.  And even if the universe changes, the changes are pretty 
> localized.  For example, it would take just a few minutes to change the 
> code to deal Pinochle hands, or even to switch to a Tarot deck.

I think this is a perfect example of the blind spot of Ada programmers.
You are so enamored of enumerations and perfectly indexed arrays and
lack of buffer overflows that you will probably miss the most likely
and subtle bug of this kind of code, which is that the Shuffle routine
fails to produce each possible permutation with uniform probability!