Re: output of enumeration types

[Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com>]

Staszek Goldstein wrote:
> 
> I am afraid this is just the kind of argument that makes Ada so unpopular 
> (no offence
> intended). The point is that Ada delivers lots of beautiful abstractions, 
> but people
> are often quite happy with something less abstract and easier to use. For
> example, I would have no difficulty dealing with the problem in C because I
> would not have even dreamt of building the type in C - I would have used
> regular strings instead. You use abstractions to solve problems, not to 
> create
> them.

I would have no difficulty dealing with the problem in Ada. Yes, I would 
have to write some code to deal with the character and string types 
involved, but it would be a lot less than the amount of code I would 
need to deal with the concepts in C.

> Ada, while gaining power, lost some of its virtues 
> as a language
> "easy to read" without becoming "easier to write".

Emphasizing ease of reading over ease of writing is an explicit design 
goal for Ada. Ada is a language for software engineers. "Easier to 
write" is only important for coders.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
67