Re: Announce: Grace project site operational

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

"Larry Hazel" <lhhazel@otelco.net> wrote in message
news:3CDBD673.FF452A3D@otelco.net...
> >
> I remember starting in the middle of an Ada 83 project.  There was a
separate
> type defined for everything.  An old Elvis song kept going through my
head.  But
> instead of "girl happy", I was substituting "type happy".
>
Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. The problem is coming up with a
guideline or some other sort of rule of thumb that offers constructive
advice (especially to the beginner) as to when creating more types isn't
really helpful. It really is a kind of an "art".

Example: There are times when one might want to have unique types for Volts
and Amps and Ohms (reading from different sensors) and there are times when
this would only be extremely painful (when calculating typical electrical
relationships) and what exactly would the type conversions mean anyway? If I
say "Amps := Amps_Type (Volts) / Amps_Type (Ohms) ;" am I really converting
volts to amps and ohms to amps as it appears? Not exactly as it reads. So
there can be an awful large amount of gray area in deciding when to create
types and when doing so is going to just make things worse. But I can
usually spot "worse" when I see it. :-)

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