Re: fyi, very interesting Ada paper OOP vs. Readability

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Simon Wright" <simon@pushface.org> wrote in message 
news:m2y5p0sfyg.fsf@pushface.org...
> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:
>
>> I tend to lean toward the explicit side of the fence (I try to avoid use
>> clauses because of the maintenance headaches that they cause), but I do 
>> know
>> that code can be too explicit. People hate it when I write:
>>
>>           if Ada.Strings.Unbounded."="(My_String,
>> Ada.Strings.Unbounded.To_Unbounded_String ("open") then ...
>>
>> because I refuse to use use clauses in almost all instances. I surely can
>> see why they might not find the above as readable as:
>>          if My_String = "open" then ...
>
> Well, you live and learn! I thought the 'renaming To_Unbounded_String as
> "+"' trick was necessary - should have trusted the designers.

I use that trick (and "use all") when I have many operations to do in a 
scope, but if there is only one or two, it's not worth all of the typing. As 
for putting it in a package and importing and using it, recall the original 
message about making it hard to find declarations...

Ada should have had a "conversion" operator ("#" has been proposed), and 
clearly Ada.Strings.Unbounded should use it. But that gets shot down every 
time it is proposed (and it has been proposed for every language revision 
other than Ada 2012); mainly because a minority think that "+" is perfectly 
good for that. And another minority think that uses "+" on non-numeric types 
is *disgusting*, so we can never get the operators added to packages. A 
perfect impasse.

                                               Randy.


                                         Randy.