Re: Refactoring and Ada

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

I'd agree that all too often folks would slap a rep clause on something
where the internal representation didn't matter. But often it was done for
something reasonably approximating a good reason:

"I'm not sure how this type may be used as the system grows. Perhaps we'll
be putting it into external messages or files and it will be important to
insure that we know/control the representation..."

"Sure, we know it goes 0, 1, 2... for now, but we're getting it from some
other source and we have to deal with the possibility of a different
representation later..."

"*I* know that the compiler is giving us 0, 1, 2... and *you* know the
compiler is giving us 0, 1, 2..., but the standard doesn't *guarantee* that
this must be the case so what if some perverted, sick, twisted compiler
writer changes his mind with a later version of the compiler? (or a
different brand, or a later standard...)"

Maybe it bordered on paranoia - but paranoia is just a kind of awareness &
awareness is just a form of love. :-) Its a good thing that Ada95 promised
to provide what one would reasonably expect from an enumeration.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Marc A. Criley" <mcqada95@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3C65BFF4.F15A07D0@earthlink.net...
>
> I saw myriad instances of these specification in the code from certain
> projects.  And the thing is, they were rarely in situations where the
> underlying representation was of any interest, the enumerations were
> being used as nothing more than enumerations.  The only thing I could
> figure was that it was paranoia from some of the early Ada adopters.
>