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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,808505c9db7d5613 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Looking for good Ada95 book Date: 1996/11/04 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 194376920 references: <32723F6A.54A3@dtek.chalmers.se> <55955a$n04@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <55kmtp$3s3@top.mitre.org> <1996Nov4.083416.1@eisner> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Michael says "> I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary > consensus, and I feel that we should reject all nonsense standards > such as capitalization that take time away from making a program > semantically correct (solving the problem correctly) and making > it efficient." (at least I hope it was Michael, sorry if I am confused). In fact consistency of style is critical to producting reliable maintainable programs. Sure, there are always some people who say that they don't want to be constrained by such silly things as petty consistency. I consider this viewpoint to be a menace since it leads to notions of idiosyncratic personal style and code ownership, which to me are anathema to realiable large scale programming. I think Michael's specific recommended style (lower case for everything) does NOT lead to the most readable code, and I think it is a big improvement that we are indeed seeing something like a general consensus in coding style (I react here to the huge volume of Ada 95 code we receive at report@gnat.com from thousands of users of GNAt, nearly all of whom adhere to the lower case keywords, Mixed_Case_Identifier style. Not all, but nearly all. I know that one can have tools that automatically translate from one style to another, but even if such tools work perfectly (they cannot in practice, since naming often has semantic contnts, e.g. NOSC_Policy, not Nosc_Policy may be preferred), they do not promote common interchange of code. It is far better if, as in the C world, people converge on a single style that everyone uses. I think this convergence is much more important than what particular style is chosen. As Tarski use to say, explaining why stanards are important, it really doesn't matter if you drive on the left or the right, but it is quite importnat that everyone agree. I used to prefer the Ada-83 RM SHOUTING_IDENTIFIER style, since it is wht I was used to, but after a painful transition, I now can't stand that style any more. That's the real point, people get used to almost any convention, so they might as well get used to a common comvention. That is why Mike's book is disturbing, it creates a generation of Ada programmers who have got used to a seriously non-standard style. Virtually NO code that we see at report@gnat.com uses upper case keywords like BEGIN and END. The only other use we see is SHOUTING_IDENTIFIERS, Ada 83 style, and that is certainly disappearing fast.