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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Another Idea for Ada 20XX
Date: 3 Dec 2001 19:56:57 -0600
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In article <45601fc.0112031740.3e217c8a@posting.google.com>, byhoe@users.sourceforge.net (Adrian Hoe) writes:

> The crash of NASA Mars probe proved the inability to communicate or to
> standardize among those engineers. Wouldn't this be avoided if these
> engineers agreed on a standardized unit of measurement? Again, will
> the further augmentation of Ada (adding of units conversions and
> checking) help to resolve this problem?

If they simply used common type declarations, a lot of errors would
be detected.  If Meters is a new type and is used throughout, and
Feet is another new type, it becomes difficult to add them.

Again, in cross-language environments this was done for subprograms
and records with a tool called a data dictionary -- years ago.