Re: Is this expected behavior or not

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

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
news:1xsmzl7alqflb$.oz1qkrleisa7$.dlg@40tude.net...
> On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:51:11 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
>> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
>> news:13y3efy877tjl$.5yuu230sknnq$.dlg@40tude.net...
>>> On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:01:27 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:
>>>
>>>> You have many interesting ideas that would be far better served if you
>>>> described them in Ada-terms.
>>>
>>> How do you describe tagged types in Ada 83 terms?
>>
>> Why would I want to?
>
> You insisted on that claiming that Ada can be only discussed in Ada-terms.

You didn't answer the question. Why would you want to describe something 
from a recent version of the language in terms of an obsolete one? On top of 
which, when anyone says Ada without qualification, that means Ada 2012 (as 
that is the current version of Ada). I'm not likely to talk about Ada 83 as 
there is no point (of course, for many things, the language version doesn't 
matter).

...
>> Another way to put it is that raw science (as you called it) is 
>> essentially
>> irrelevant unless it can be applied to engineering. After all, *ideas* 
>> are
>> worthless; only execution has value in today's world. I care about the
>> execution (that is the usability of the design) of Ada, not how it fits 
>> into
>> someone's theory of how things should be.
>
> Then you must have wrong understanding of science. It is actually the
> reverse: if the theory does not explain facts, it is wrong.

Huh? I'm contending that the theory is irrelevant (much like religion -- and 
it shares a lot of characteristics with that). That's because you can't use 
it to design a useful programming language, only to pigeon-hole and/or take 
potshots at it after the fact. That's not useful or helpful.

One could say that about a lot of basic theories. Knowledge of 
thermodynamics has little to do with designing an engine; you need a lot of 
knowledge about other things to do that, and thermodynamics is *way* down on 
the list of things that matter. After all those rules are very simple to 
paraphrase: "You can't win the game. You can't break even. And you can't 
quit the game." And you can't do much even knowing that.

> Ada's subtype as defined by RM is a fact to explain (and to predict
> consequences of the choices made). The theory does it quite well. The rant
> about how Ada's RM names its subtypes is absolutely irrelevant.

But no one cares, because such matching has no relevance to anything: it's 
not going to change the design of Ada (compatibility concerns would prevent 
that in any case) and nothing about it would help you be a better Ada 
programmer (especially as the terminology clash makes it close to impossible 
to think about one and make sense of the other). So it is a waste of time.

                                      Randy.