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: a07f3367d7,c689b55786a9f2bd X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!npeer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: for S'Image use Func?? Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 16:31:47 -0400 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: <4be417b4$0$6992$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: pcls6.std.com 1273264293 5498 192.74.137.71 (7 May 2010 20:31:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 20:31:33 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.1008 (Gnus v5.10.8) Emacs/21.3 (irix) Cancel-Lock: sha1:90l53MP6shudRkCEZjPKXBigC+A= Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:11389 Date: 2010-05-07T16:31:47-04:00 List-Id: "Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57)" writes: > Le Fri, 07 May 2010 16:25:37 +0200, Robert A Duff > a �crit: >> And teaching beginners how to instantiate generics, >> when there's a simple 'Image feature, is not a good idea. > Mhhhh... don't agree. Note that I said "beginners", not "students". A beginner needs to learn how to write a "Hello, world" program first, and soon thereafter, some simple thing that involves printing out integer values. I think one of my first assignments way back when was to write a program to add up two numbers and print out the answer. If that's hard, it gives a bad first impression. (In fact, it WAS hard -- it involved horsing around with Fortran FORMAT statements and Hollerith codes, which is worse than horsing around with Ada generics.) >... 'Image is a kind of hidden genericity, and > students would get more benefit in learning the explicit one. Yes, Ada students need to learn about generics -- eventually, not in the first week of class. There's just no way a beginning programmer can understand generics in the first week. Simple things should be simple. > Forgive me for these wording I don't like : starting to have heavy > requirement on the 'Image attribute would be the start of bloating and > the start of Ada as a library instead of Ada as a language and as a > design language.. I disagree. Certainly removing the extra blank would not introduce bloat. And in fact, giving 'Image the exact same functionality as Integer_Text_IO would _simplify_ the language, by making it more uniform. - Bob