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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Announce: Grace project site operational
Date: 9 May 2002 04:50:21 -0500
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In article <abbmhs$e39$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, "Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> writes:
> I see the usefulness of different numeric types coming into play with items
> that have very distinct usages. For example, if I get data from a pressure
> transducer and a temperature sensor and an RPM sensor and they were all 16
> bit integers, I would want to make sure I didn't accidentally mix them up
> because they all represent very different things with different units, etc.
> There, I'd want separate types. But for a counter or index where typically
> all I want to do is "for X in 1..Data_Structure_Size loop" I don't see a lot
> of food value to be had by making all those unique types.
> 
> I'd be hard pressed to come up with a rule as to when it requires a separate
> type and when it can use one of the predefined types. It sort of feels like
> "art" to me. I'd suggest that it gains importance as the numbers in question
> get closer to modeling something in the "real world". The closer it gets to
> "internal housekeeping", the less interest I have in creating unique types
> for it.

Is there no way a generic type parameter can have a default value ?