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From: ee163acp@sdcc13.UUCP (DARIN JOHNSON)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.lang
Subject: Re: Who Wants Ada?
Message-ID: <266@sdcc13.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Jun-85 11:16:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcc13.266
Posted: Sun Jun 16 11:16:18 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 04:17:21 EDT
References: <1649@reed.UUCP> <186@harvard.ARPA> <453@calmasd.UUCP> <192@harvard.ARPA>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 17
Xref: linus net.micro:9558 net.lang:1409
Summary: a bit tongue in cheek

In article <192@harvard.ARPA>, macrakis@harvard.ARPA writes:
> It is certainly true that many current Ada compilers do not implement
> useful Chapter 13 features, but since the most basic one,
> unchecked_conversion, is so simple to implement (you just turn off
> type checking!), I believe most compilers have it.  This is the main
> thing you need to do C-like low-level pointer manipulations.

Ok, let's say C programmers start to use Ada.  In fact, there will be
quite a few of them.  Wouldn't it be silly if they all tended to but
unchecked_conversion at the start of all their programs.  Then when they
wanted to make distributions, they would remove it (sort of a lint type
check).  What if they went on later to suggest to some standards
committee that untyped_conversion should be the default, and there
should be a flag with 'type_checking_on' in later versions (of which
there will be next to none).  Think about it.  I don't want to.

Darin Johnson