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-Thread: 103376,cbb5b0d14f503195 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!newsmst01b.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr12.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!4988f22a!not-for-mail From: Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: Subject: Re: Working with incompetent adaists / unsafe typing war story X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Message-ID: <_1SJf.14861$2O6.8349@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.134.122.134 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr12.news.prodigy.com 1140321530 ST000 70.134.122.134 (Sat, 18 Feb 2006 22:58:50 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 22:58:50 EST Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com X-UserInfo1: TSU[@I_AOHV[RVT[AROR__TDFZ\@@FXLM@TDOCQDJ@_@FNTBLNTC@AWZWDXZXQ[K\FFSKCVM@F_N_DOBWVWG__LG@VVOIPLIGX\\BU_B@\P\PFX\B[APHTWAHDCKJF^NHD[YJAZMCY_CWG[SX\Y]^KC\HSZRWSWKGAY_PC[BQ[BXAS\F\\@DMTLFZFUE@\VL Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 03:58:50 GMT Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2975 Date: 2006-02-19T03:58:50+00:00 List-Id: "Anonymous Coward" wrote in message news:p9cJf.34455$lo3.34072@trnddc07... > > Maybe I'm just dealing with a tough crowd. A systems fella ordered a > change on one of my private types, forcing me to represent the same > type with a different set of numbers (a change in coordinate systems > to be exact). Because it was a private type, I only needed to make > that change in ONE package; which took me about 15-20 minutes (the > same change would have taken most of the day if the type were public). Someone recently encountered a problem with a package I wrote years ago that had a limited private type. It seems I had overlooked one possible requirement (method) for that type. The need for the method is rare but I should have anticipated it. No one ever encountered the problem before, as far as I know. It took me five minutes to add a specification for that method and about as long to write an implementation for it in the package body. The algorithm was simple to implement, but did involve an if statement. Had programmers been able to write their own code for the functionality of this method, the probability of some of them getting it wrong was low, but still possible. In this case, the algorithm was testable in one place rather than scattered about. If I had declared the type as non-limited, or had used a pre-defined type, the absence of the method would never have manifested itself. Users would have simply carried on without thinking about it. From this example, some designers might suppose that the type should not have been limited. My own view is that we learned something from discovering the need for this method. Also, I ended up thinking more deeply about what other methods might be required in the future. I did not come up with anything else. Unfortunately we did have to recompile the package specification, but that did not seem to present any hardship. More important, the internal strucutre of instances of the type continue to be unreachable by users of the package. Richard Riehle