From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,cbb5b0d14f503195 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!newsfeed2.telusplanet.net!newsfeed.telus.net!nntp.abs.net!news.abs.net!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Working with incompetent adaists / unsafe typing war story References: <_1SJf.14861$2O6.8349@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com> From: Stephen Leake Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:v7Y0EPtd76DD4Y8I3GBwYBZ3zLU= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:28:46 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.159.65.1 X-Complaints-To: abuse@toad.net X-Trace: news.abs.net 1140362932 66.159.65.1 (Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:28:52 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:28:52 EST Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2991 Date: 2006-02-19T10:28:46-05:00 List-Id: writes: > Someone recently encountered a problem with a package I wrote years > ago that had a limited private type. It seems I had overlooked one > possible requirement (method) for that type. The need for the method > is rare but I should have anticipated it. No one ever encountered > the problem before, as far as I know. No package is ever perfect :). > It took me five minutes to add a specification for that method and > about as long to write an implementation for it in the package body. > The algorithm was simple to implement, but did involve an if > statement. Had programmers been able to write their own code for the > functionality of this method, the probability of some of them > getting it wrong was low, but still possible. In this case, the > algorithm was testable in one place rather than scattered about. That is why open source libraries are so valuable; we can fix problems in the right place, instead of working around them. -- -- Stephe