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Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 22:51:22 -0500
From: Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
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Subject: Re: Anybody in US using ADA ? One silly idea..
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Date: 2003-01-07T22:51:22-05:00
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Richard Riehle wrote:
> Some have suggested the C++ model for generics is slightly better
> than that in Ada.  I respectfully suggest that the improved flexibility
> also results in a degradation of reliability.

Since generics are "expanded" at compile-time, you cannot mean the
usual things that reliability means with respect to C++, such as
indexing out of array bounds, or using bad pointers, or overflowing
arithmetic. So I assume that you mean instead that the C++ model
makes it more difficult to see, at the point of use, exactly which
piece of code is being invoked.

As I recall, it was exactly this concern which led to the tragic lack
of pointers to functions in Ada83. I suppose some lessons need to be
learned over and over again.