Re: Negative float problem

[Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr>]

Maciej Sobczak a �crit :
> As Samuel Tardieu said earlier about the original problem - "... almost 
> any Ada-er has learnt this rule the hard way one day or another". For me 
> this sentence expresses some defficiency in the language. If programmers 
> are bound to having hard rules no matter what, then I'd prefer those 
> rules to be easier in 95% cases and more difficult in the remaining 
> corners than the other way round.
> 
Since you are new to Ada, there is something that you must understand. 
The Ada language has been designed in such a way that either a construct 
always works, and works the same with every implementation, or does not 
compile. There is no space for "sometimes", "maybe", "depends", and 
other things like that that are common in other languages.

The price for this is that the user is sometimes frustrated, because it 
seems that something very natural from a user's point of view is 
rejected by the compiler. Quite often, the reason is that the simple 
case would work, but the general one would not. Hence it is always rejected.

In the long run, this is quite reassuring. You get confident in the 
language and the compiler, because you understand that they are there to 
protect you - sometimes from issues that you don't even know about. And 
you will accept the (small) price you have to pay for this.

(Agreed: some discussions on c.l.a. show that not everybody is accepting 
the price :-)

-- 
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            J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr