Re: Beware: Rep spec on an enumeration type ...

[gwinn@res.ray.com (Joe Gwinn)]

Green Hills informs me that unnamed Ada vendors have been misusing my 5
December 1997 posting "Beware: Rep spec on an enumeration type causes code
explosion" (on newsgroup "comp.lang.ada") to gain unfair competitive
advantage, in effect claiming that my posting proves that the Green Hills
Ada95 compiler is relatively immature, that only Green Hills has such
problems, etc.  I very much disagree with this interpretation.  My
interpretation follows.


All this talk of "maturity" in compilers for a very complex language
finalized only two years ago, in 1995, strikes me as painfully naive.  All
living compilers are works in progress.   They all have their strong
points and weak points, some common to all compilers, and some particular
to one or another compiler, and all will have their fair share of
pratfalls. This is true of C++ and Ada95, which are of roughly equal
complexity.  It's misleading to say or imply otherwise.  

So, if a vendor foolishly claims such perfection, laugh, and ask to see
his buglist.  Yes, he does most certainly does have one.  It may prove
difficult to get a copy.

Also ask for the names and phone numbers of ten happy users of the
compiler, call them up, and ask them how just how happy they are.  If no
such list is forthcoming, find another vendor.  We are judged by the work
of our hands.


More to the point, my complaint here is with the entire Ada community, and
not with this or that specific vendor or compiler.  What's needed is an
efficient way for mere customers to gracefully avoid the inevitable
pratfalls, rather than to be forced find them in the dark one by one, with
their shins.  Expensive, painful, and embarassing.  

There is a rule of thumb in retail that every satisfied customer tells
perhaps two people, while every dissatisfied customer tells at least ten
people.  Every horror story shrinks the Ada market.  

It does nobody any good to allow Ada's reputation to be damaged by
allowing one Ada customer after another to blunder into such well-known
beartraps.  Most customers are domain experts, not language experts. 
Telling them after the fact that they should have known better just makes
them angrier and angrier, and drives them away.

Tucker Taft's posting of 9 December 1997, which gave a number of areas to
look into, is just the kind of pointed information that is needed, and can
form the start of an Ada95 FAQ.  What other areas are known?  Let's pull a
FAQ together, starting now.  Please email me a copy of all relevant
postings.


Joe Gwinn