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From: Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Invade wikipedia!
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:05:59 +0100
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen
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Date: 2009-02-25T09:05:59+01:00
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Bill wrote:
> Martin wrote:

>> Sorry my made up example doesn't cut mustard! Does this make it any
>> clearer? :-)
>> 
>> ------------------------
>> -- Calculate_Velocity --
>> ------------------------
>> 
>> procedure Calculate_Velocity
>>              (Speed    :     Meters_Per_Second;
>>               Time     :     Seconds;
>>               Velocity : out Meters_Per_Second_Per_Second);
>
> Nope!
> The reason why is left as an exercise for the student. 8-)

I'm not really a student any more, but now that the students have had
their chance ...

There are several problems with this:

 + The subroutine doesn't do what its name says it does (physicists
   see this easily).

 + Since the subroutine only returns a single, simple object, it would
   typically make much more sense implementing it as a function.

 + In the specific discussed context (programming example wikis), each
   subroutine usually already stands out alone.

 + Comments are inherently dangerous (since they are not checked by
   the compiler).

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"Never trust a statistic you have not falsified yourself."