From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: miniscences
Date: 1998/01/17
Date: 1998-01-17T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <dewar.885087710@merv> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 01bd239f$50528740$99fd82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com
Nick asks
<<I do a lot of training of Ada programmers (no more jokes about the blind
leading the blind, please :-}. I shall have to add this one to the list
(it gets longer and longer :-| You say this is an old idiom: how old?
>>
As old as the Ada design. During the Green design effort (i.e. late 70's),
the issue of whether to have implicit conversions was discussed, and at
that time Jean felt, and others generally agreed, that the use of the "+"
operator in this way meant that you have the possibility of making the
conversion pretty close to silent from a reading point of view, and that
therefore it was not necessary to introduce implicit convresions.
After all, look at the number of people who find even the + too silent,
and would prefer to see a full identifier here. Imagine the situation
in a langyuage like C++ with implicit conversions where you can have
a lot going on behind the scenes with no syntactic hint at all.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-01-17 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-01-11 0:00 renaming Interfaces.Java.Ada_To_Java_String to the + operator Terry J. Westley
1998-01-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-10 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-01-13 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1998-01-13 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1998-01-13 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-13 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1998-01-13 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
[not found] ` <En3Cxz.7HD@world.std.com>
1998-01-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-21 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1998-01-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-22 0:00 ` Anonymous
[not found] ` <dewar.885498969@merv>
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Geert Bosch
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1998-01-23 0:00 ` Anonymous
1998-01-24 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-01-13 0:00 ` Terry J. Westley
1998-01-14 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-15 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-01-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-17 0:00 ` miniscences Nick Roberts
1998-01-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar [this message]
1998-01-19 0:00 ` renaming Interfaces.Java.Ada_To_Java_String to the + operator Anonymous
1998-01-25 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-01-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-14 0:00 ` Anonymous
1998-01-14 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-01-12 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
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