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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: A curiosity...
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 16:30:09 -0600
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen
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Date: 2008-12-04T16:30:09-06:00
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"mockturtle" <framefritti@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:a88dafcc-04d0-4a46-a168-7cb034894181@k41g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
...
> Few days ago a formerly student of mine came to
> ask me something about (C) threads.  She showed
> me a tutorial she found somewhere (unfortunately
> I do not know where, so I cannot give you any
> reference).
...
> Excuse me  while I turn the heat up... I suddenly
> feel a chill down my spine.... ;-)

I thought you were going to show her (and us) the proper Ada way to do this.

Otherwise, I think I'm missing your point. Every C-language interface that 
I've every used (the most important being Win32) is full of hacks to get 
around strong typing. This isn't news, or even a reflection on the C 
language itself. Claw is full of similar hacks (in Ada!) in order to use 
Win32 properly.

The best thing to do with almost any C-language interface is to wrap it as 
thickly as possible to cover up as much as possible of that cruft. That's 
irrespective of the implementation language (why do you think MFC was so 
widely used??). Perhaps C programmers are so used to cruft that they fail to 
abstract it away properly, but that reflects more on the programmers (and 
the culture that they work it) than the language.

                                             Randy.