Re: About to give up...

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

>You are right, the return codes are meant to be taken care of, but my
>point is while writing the program, I want things to get things going as
>quickly as possible. Then, when I'm satisfied with the structure, I
>complete it with error handling and taking care of return parameters. I
>am to impatient to take care of every possible event in the beginning of
>a project. I implement a feature; if it works, fine, if it doesn't I add
>error handling code and figure out what went wrong.

This is a reciple for unreliable code. You are depending on testing to 
verify that your code is free of defects, but unless you do extraordinarily
extensive test backed by a formal discipline (e.g. MCDC) testing is a
notoriously bad way of showing that your code is correct. The key to
high quality code is to learn how to write correct code in the first place.

Of course there are many environments in which code does not have to be
reliable (most of the Microsoft type applications envrionment is like
that -- it is not so terrible if your system bombs every now and then, just
irritating). 

But we are talking in the Ada world of a completely different environment
in which we are aiming at large complex highly reliable programs, and 
making it easier for an impatient programmer to throw things together
fast is NOT one of the design goals of Ada :-)