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From: mff@wuphys.UUCP (Swamp Thing)
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.lang.ada
Subject: Re: What I miss... (really C, Ada, religion)
Message-ID: <374@wuphys.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Oct-85 11:17:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: wuphys.374
Posted: Sat Oct  5 11:17:16 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 07:07:34 EDT
References: <796@kuling.UUCP> <2580002@csd2.UUCP> <191@graffiti.UUCP> <568@unisoft.UUCP> <1777@orca.UUCP> <879@lll-crg.UUCP>
Reply-To: mff@wuphys.UUCP (Swamp Thing)
Organization: Physics Dept., Washington Univ. in St. Louis
Lines: 36
Xref: watmath net.arch:1861 net.lang.ada:373

In article <879@lll-crg.UUCP> brooks@lll-crg.UUCP (Eugene D. Brooks III) writes:
>Could we please keep this discussion in net.ada, net.politics or net.religion.
>
>I subscribed to net.ada for a month a year ago in apology to a ADA nut
>for posting the statement "ADA sucks" to the net.  There were a total of two
>articles on net.ada that month, which is proof enough that ADA is a language
>that is devoid if serious use.  The only people who like it are those who can't
>manage to write correct programs and need a crutch like subscript checking even
>in a production version of a code.
>
>If you program has a proof of correctness, and it checks its input data
>properly, it does not need range checks on subscripts.  Such checking only
>slows the computer down.  I don't have spare cycles for such a wast of time.
>REAL programmers don't need subscript checking, they write lint free code
>automatically.  Please leave your ADA hype on net.ada where no one is bothering
>to read it!

The whole point of subscript checking, as far as I'm concerned, is to use
during development.  I don't see how slowing down the cpu is an issue for that.
On the other hand, if ADA doesn't allow you to turn off checking, I could see
that would be a pain.  I guess we're not all perfect programers.  And having
"a" proof of correctness hardly means that a complicated piece of code will
work as intended in all circumstances.

						Mark F. Flynn
						Department of Physics
						Washington University
						St. Louis, MO  63130
						ihnp4!wuphys!mff

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