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=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,d89b08801f2aacae X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-05-03 16:07:09 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!colt.net!kibo.news.demon.net!demon!psiuk-p2!psiuk-p3!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is strong typing worth the cost? Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 10:01:09 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: References: <4519e058.0204290722.2189008@posting.google.com> <3CCE8523.6F2E721C@earthlink.net> <3CCEB246.9090009@worldnet.att.net> <3CCFD76A.A60BB9A8@flash.net> <3CD0A3B8.7B7C8622@san.rr.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: dhcp-200-133.miami.pace.co.uk X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 1020434471 22738 136.170.200.133 (3 May 2002 14:01:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@news.cam.pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 May 2002 14:01:11 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:23519 Date: 2002-05-03T14:01:11+00:00 List-Id: I have absolutely no argument with the notion that different problem domains are going to have different cost drivers. I believe I said somewhere else that if you didn't care about bugs and you didn't care about maintenance, then design work was just an up-front cost with little to no back end payoff. (With the caveat that if you do *no* design, your project might just fail entirely.) One might reasonably ask: "Couldn't the animation software be well built and still do its job?" Is it of necessity spaghetti code? Is it somehow or other faster to get the job done to just start plodding along laying down code until the animation looks right? I suspect that if the hypothetical animation developers did *some* analysis and design up front and *did* build solid, reliable code that it would possibly not take any longer to get to market and might yield larger chunks of things that could be reused & save time/money on the next animation. (I wouldn't go to the extremes of analysis & design done for safety critical software, but surely the animator still needs to do some amount of "debugging" to get the thing to work at all and surely that means if there were better forthought and stronger checks, lots of those problems might be minimized.) I see the point that throw-away code need not be well built. But it is not demonstrated that this is somehow faster or better or cheaper than well-built code to do the same thing. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com "Darren New" wrote in message news:3CD0A3B8.7B7C8622@san.rr.com... > > On the other hand, if you're writing run-once software, it's pretty easy > to see that the cleanliness of the design is virtually irrelevant. > Consider software to animate a crowd of CGI characters in a movie. As > long as the end result looks good, it doesn't matter what the code looks > like. It could be the most god-awful mess of spaghetti code and misnamed > uncommented variables you can imagine, and it just doesn't matter. As > soon as the film is out, you're never going to run the program again. > Certainly if the requirement is "make the fur on the monster look > realistic", the first place to start is not the type system. >