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From: woodruff@tanana.llnl.gov (John Woodruff)
Subject: Re: Is there a language that Dijkstra liked? (was: Re: Software
 landmines (loops))
Date: 1998/10/28
Message-ID: <udn26gxgsi.fsf@tanana.llnl.gov>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 406146708
Followup-To: comp.lang.ada
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab
Reply-To: woodruff1@llnl.gov
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-10-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>>>>> "Pat" == Pat Rogers <progers@NOclasswideSPAM.com> writes:
In article <712r19$rs5$1@supernews.com> "Pat Rogers" <progers@NOclasswideSPAM.com> writes:

    > Ehud Lamm wrote in message ...
    >> On Mon, 26 Oct 1998 dennison@telepath.com wrote:

    > <good points all>

    >> Still - Remember you can achieve all the run time checking
    > functionality
    >> in any language. It is just that in some languages you have to
    >> code
    > it
    >> explicitly. But you want your code to be of quallity - you just
    > have to do
    >> it.


    > Explicitly coded checks come at a price, though, that
    > language-defined checks may be able to avoid.  ......

Another consideration occurs when the programmer offers to code his
(her) own checks, in defense against the kind of errors that Ada's
checking prevents:

    > ...... In Ada, the fact
    > that the check is defined by the language means that we don't
    > explicitly write the it ourselves, and the optimizer then has
    > freedom to help us with performance.  Ironic, isn't it?

The programmer is setting out to write additional code, and that code
itself is susceptible to some defects.  Shouldn't we worry that these
defects injected into the *checking* code might lower the quality of the
product?