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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Case dependence and coding standards
Date: 03 Jun 2003 15:04:05 -0400
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2003-06-03T15:04:05-04:00
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Vinzent Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com> writes:

> Robert A Duff wrote:
> 
> >It would be nicer to have a compiler that simply corrected such errors
> >in the source file, instead of complaining about them.
> 
> Well, I expect a compiler to *read* the source, not actually *write*
> it.

Sure, that's what we're all used to.  But we expect our editors and
pretty-printers and CM systems and so forth to modify our source code.
Why do we trust some programs over others to modify our code?

I like to turn on the GNAT switch that complains when I say "Text_io"
instead of "Text_IO".  The latter is more readable, because that's how
the package was declared.  But I would like even better for it to fix
it, rather than complain about it.

Of course, Emacs does almost all of that for me, as I type it in, but in
a few cases it requires extra work -- Emacs doesn't know Ada visibility
and overloading rules.

> >The goal is to make consistent/readable code,
> 
> Strong ACK.

:-)

> >not to punish programmers who are too
> >lazy to hit the shift key.
> 
> NAK. Lazyness has to be punished. Hard. ;->

On the contrary.  Laziness should be encouraged, in the sense of
programmers avoiding useless work.  The only kind of laziness I want
to inhibit is the kind that causes extra work in the long run
(e.g. unreadable code).

- Bob