From: Steve Whalen <swhalen@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Time to join the fold?
Date: 1999/01/27
Date: 1999-01-27T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <swhalenF67p8v.HGq@netcom.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 78i8s4$hth$1@its.hooked.net
Mike Silva <mjsilva@jps.net> wrote:
[snip]
: Now for another question. Some people have mentioned getting into the Ada
: "mind-set". What are the main components of this mind-set? What, IOW,
: should I pay special attention to in order to avoid simply writing "C in
: Ada" (whatever that might mean). [snip]
Spend more time thinking about your application's data, and your
application "as data" (by "application as data" I mean revisit program
logic, and see if it can be better represented in a "soft" data
structure somewhere).
Here's what I mean by spending more time thinking about your data. As
assembler or C programmers, we tend to describe data to the compiler
just clearly enough so we can start coding.
I think a key difference of an Ada "mind-set", is that I now work much
harder to tell the compiler everything I know about the data, with as
much precision as I can, so I can get the compiler's strong typing
facilities working for me.
Even more importantly I want to benefit from thinking more deeply
about WHY some data should be a represented one way, instead of
another.
I've had programmers switching to Ada, ask for help in getting this
"mind-set". One thing that seemed to help, was when I assigned them to
take some data structure they were working with, and create as many
different representations of the data structure in Ada as they could
(i.e. compile & use them in a simple program).
Usually, at the end of the first few meetings, I'd send them back to
look at other ways to represent the data & use more features of the
language (i.e. go back and read about ...). Once they had a fairly
complete set of the ways you could represent the data, I'd have them
explain why each one was a good way to represent the data for this
particular application, or why it was bad, or why it was best.
After a while, a "mind-set" starts to develop, and you learn how
important it is to describe your data to Ada properly, so Ada can help
you the most. This "mind-set" gets reinforced when you find doing all
this extra (or more painstaking) work helps you locate deeper logic
flaws in your systems.
Bottom line: Getting the data structures and representations right
lets Ada help you build higher quality applications.
Steve
--
{===--------------------------------------------------------------===}
Steve Whalen swhalen@netcom.com
{===--------------------------------------------------------------===}
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1999-01-27 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 52+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1999-01-22 0:00 Time to join the fold? Mike Silva
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1999-01-25 0:00 ` Mike Silva
1999-01-25 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-02 0:00 ` news.oxy.com
1999-01-25 0:00 ` Pat Rogers
1999-01-25 0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-31 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1999-02-01 0:00 ` Dynamicly declaring arrays (was: Time to join the fold?) dennison
1999-02-01 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1999-02-01 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1999-02-02 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-02 0:00 ` news.oxy.com
1999-02-02 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-02 0:00 ` nabbasi
1999-02-02 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-02 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-02 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-03 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1999-02-03 0:00 ` Modula 2 William Clodius
1999-02-02 0:00 ` Dynamicly declaring arrays (was: Time to join the fold?) Al Christians
1999-02-02 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-02 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-03 0:00 ` news.oxy.com
1999-02-03 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-02-04 0:00 ` M2 history - relations to Ada news.oxy.com
1999-02-04 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr.
1999-02-04 0:00 ` news.oxy.com
1999-02-04 0:00 ` G.S. Vigneault
1999-02-04 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen
1999-02-04 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1999-02-04 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk
1999-02-05 0:00 ` Grant Edwards
1999-02-04 0:00 ` Aron Felix Gurski
1999-02-05 0:00 ` Robert Lanziner-Furtenbach
1999-02-04 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr.
1999-02-05 0:00 ` Robert Lanziner-Furtenbach
1999-02-04 0:00 ` Chuck Clark
1999-02-10 0:00 ` Andreas Borchert
1999-02-04 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-01-26 0:00 ` Time to join the fold? Jean-Pierre Rosen
1999-01-26 0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-26 0:00 ` Pascal MALAISE
1999-01-27 0:00 ` Steve Whalen [this message]
1999-02-01 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Steve Whalen
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-24 0:00 ` Steve Whalen
1999-01-24 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-24 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
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