Re: Are you asking the right questions?

Re: Are you asking the right questions?

[Robert Kitzberger]

harrisj@esseye.si.com (Jay Harris) writes:

>If, as I believe, VHDL is a second-cousin to Ada, Ada appears to provide
>assistance in maintaining those module interfaces when defined.  BUT ...
>
>It seems a great deal of time, effort, and flames are directed toward
>language issues when much more could be accomplished by working on the
>task of efficient problem analysis and interface definition.  Once this
>task is accomplished then the language choice is much less critical, 

But it's an iterative process.  If your language encourages interface
definition in the first place, then you will get a jump start on 
learning how to define interfaces well.   Before you write much of a
program, you are highly encouraged (via the type system, the encapsulation
of packages, private parts, etc.) to define your interfaces.  If your
language doesn't encourage interface definition, then of course you
_can_ define an interface, but there is little there to encourage you
to do so, outside of your knowledge of the advantages of clean interface
design.  I honestly believe that my C language interfaces are better
now than they were before I learned Ada, but we'll never know if that's
because of the influence of Ada, or of years of making mistakes and
learning.

Of course, most people bothering to read this newsgroup already design
their Ada, C, JOVIAL, C++, <your_favorite_language> interfaces cleanly...
it's those non-disciplined engineers that someone (Firth?) wrote about
recently that we need to worry about ;-)

	.Bob.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Kitzberger                          Internet:   rlk@rational.com
Rational, Grass Valley, CA              CompuServe: 70743,1550
type Opinion is private;