Re: Ada platforms and pricing, was: Re: a new language, designed for safety !

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Sat, 21 Jun 2014 10:35:52 +0200, Natasha Kerensikova  
<lithiumcat@instinctive.eu> a écrit:

> On 2014-06-20, Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
>> "Natasha Kerensikova" <lithiumcat@instinctive.eu> wrote in message
>> news:slrnlq7oge.i0l.lithiumcat@nat.rebma.instinctive.eu...
>> ...
>>> The way I understand the whole situation is that ASIS provider  
>>> diversity
>>> would be a good thing too (though not as much as compiler diversity),
>>> and Gela is not too far from there, so pushing Gela forward would be a
>>> good thing both globally and for my self-improvement.
>>
>> That would work, of course, but all of the hard stuff (well, almost all)
>> would be in the GELA ASIS front-end. And you'd have to do frequent
>> maintenance on the ASIS stuff if you wanted to actually compile Ada (as
>> almost every bug would be in the ASIS part). It certainly could work,  
>> but it
>> would mean having to understand the GELA ASIS code in detail (not just  
>> the
>> interface). For me, I'd rather fix my own code than someone else's.
>
> Funnily, it's the first time I'm warned against re-using code instead of
> re-writing it, usually I'm warned against re-writing instead of
> re-using.

The “why” often matters more the “how”, and about “reusing”, which is an  
“how”, one should not lose track of the “why”, and the “why” does not  
always suggest to reuse. See an old paper on this, here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html
In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, by Joel Spolsky


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University