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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: [Ada] made me hate programming
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 18:50:24 -0500
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen
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Date: 2010-07-01T18:50:24-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"Georg Bauhaus" <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> wrote in message 
news:4c2cb60f$0$7651$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
...
> Much less so when the messages are like the ones Peter Chapin has
> quoted (about overload resolution). They make me think of a
> language profile that disallows overloading.
> Once you have it, the confusing messages are gone, or replaced
> with something that has meaning in the context of the language profile.
> (Lack of overloading is arguably a desirable quality of
> real world programming languages, if one includes SPARK and Eiffel.
> If someone feels artificially deprived of programming powers,
> you can say that once overloading is explained, we'll see some
> algorithms that use it.)

I don't see any particular need for such a profile, at least in the case of 
overloading.

Janus/Ada produces error messages ignoring overloading when that is 
possible. For instance, if there is only one Put_String routine, the call:
    Put_String (10);
would get the message: "Unable to resolve - parameter has wrong type" with 
the arrow pointing at "10". The error handler also tries to make sensible 
messages for predefined math operators.

Thus, the reason you get unintelligible messages is that you are using 
heavily overloaded routines in student programs (like Text_IO). Don't do 
that and the problem pretty much goes away (at least until the students are 
taught about overloading, but hopefully by then they'll be better equiped to 
handle the complexity).

[Unfortunately, if we can't make a sensible message, we fall back on "Unable 
to resolve" with no other information, which is frustrating even to someone 
that has been programming in Ada for 25 years [that is, me]. We could never 
figure out a way to present the possibilities that made any sense; AdaCore 
has done a better job here.]

                                     Randy.