Re: status of Ada STL?

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

Well, I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as the "casual user". What's
the point of having a library if its only for someone who is just tinkering
around and not doing serious development? Perhaps this perspective helps:
For a serious Ada user who may not have stringent performance criteria, a
standard library is better than a roll-your-own library if he can quickly
and easily get his job done using it. In the handful of cases where there
might be a need to do something very complex or with tough requirements, the
Ada programmer may still need to roll his own because *no* standard library
can possibly meet every conceivable need.

When I was doing C++ work with MSVC++, they gave me lists and maps as
freebies. They may not have been the most sophisticated classes imaginable,
but they sure made it quick to put together many parts of a serious
application without having to do lots of drudge work making yet another
custom data structure. Of course, in this instance there was no issue of
realtime or safety critical performance that might have warranted a very
careful look at possibly creating more optimal classes, but that's kind of
rare in comparison to most programming jobs.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote in message
news:aneb7v$81m$1@s1.read.news.oleane.net...
>
> I strongly support that statement.
> I *do* keep rewriting data structure packages, when I have some
specialized
> requirements.
> After all, that's my job, and not a big deal if you know how to write
them.
> Predefined libraries are for the casual user, under not-demanding
conditions
>