Re: Use of constants on EFA

[mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)]

In article <63qkmc$8va$1@uttwil.bodensee.com>, "Kevin Wilson"
<Kevin.Wilson@konstanz.netsurf.de> wrote:

>However our customer (who must accept our code) states that constants
>should only be declared at package level. They argue that in the
>above example the constant will change its value if the code is executed
>again, therefore is not fixed !

Perhaps this is a case of ambiguous requirements.  Change the word "fixed"
to the words "read-only," and maybe that'll make them happy.

>Apart from the question of good programming practice, we rely heavily
>on declaring local constants to read unconstrained array structures
>returned by functions and without this would require untidy interfaces
>and I would imagine more memory.

The frequent use of declare blocks and localization of objects _is_ good
programming practice, and you are doing the right thing.

However, there is a certain tension between localization of an object and
nesting - it often happens that you start getting nesting 3 or 4 levels
deep, which can be bad for because this confuses programmers.  So this
means that objects will be localized, but not necessarily constant.

>Any comments on this would be appreciated or if there are any people
>reading this who were involved in the writing of this document and can
>clarify what was meant by this statement please let me know.

Tell your customer to stop micro-managing.  If he's paying you to write
software, then he has get out of your way, and let you do your job.

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Matthew Heaney
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