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From: "G.B." <bauhaus@futureapps.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Functions vs constants
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 14:37:51 +0200
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Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:21152
Date: 2014-07-23T14:37:51+02:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On 23.07.14 00:07, Randy Brukardt wrote:
>     with P, Q; use P, Q;
>     procedure R is
>     begin
>         if Error then -- (1)
>            raise Error; -- (2)
>        end if;
>     end R;
>
> both (1) and (2) are illegal today. But there's no good reason for that; the
> profiles (imagining an extended idea of profile to include objects and
> exceptions) are different and there can be no more confusion between them
> than between overloaded enumeration literals.

Well, this text gives the reader a lucid hint at what the homonyms
might mean! Sounds like more context dependency as we have some
already, don't we. Good grief.

This over-overloading, rightfully frowned upon by SPARK (and not just
by SPARK), I think, plays into the hands of those programmers who like
to write less, be secretive, and brag about some unproductive linguistic
cleverness. Why force inference on readers of Ada programs?
The result is so similar to obfuscated source text. Javascript
compilers employ this very technique, i.e. they re-use names like `a'
as often as lexical bindings will permit.

IMHO, no single name should denote different objects appearing
in one piece of "discourse" (block). Prefixes are good!

JOE    - “Hey Jack!”
JACK_1 - “Yes?”
JACK_2 - “Yes?”
JOE    - “Push that jack over here!”
JACK_1 - “What?”
JACK_2 - “What has he done?"
JOE    - “No, the jack on wheels.”
JACK_1 - “None of us has wheel shoes.”
JACK_2 - “No, he means the flag.”
...

As you can see, homonyms make things appear silly (on at least
two accounts). But it doesn't stop here, since the internet of
things will, I'm certain, make jacks capable of reacting to
voice commands...