Re: Passing procedures as parameters to procedures.

[cis.ohio-state.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!firth@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Robert Fi]

In article <1993May4.183607@di.epfl.ch> Magnus.Kempe@di.epfl.ch (Magnus Kempe) 
writes:
>In article <1993May4.094549.13420@sei.cmu.edu>, firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firt
h) writes:
>: [...] trying to replicate something like the Algol-60
>: 
>: 	real procedure Integrate ( real procedure F; real lwb, upb );
>: 
>: and put it in a library package somewhere.  You can't do it.
>
>Use generics (for simple cases--99.99%):

Well, yes, you can use generics.  Unfortunately, with most Ada
implementations, what you get is, in effect, a type-checked
macroexpansion of the code body.  Apart from its bulk, this
has the problem that any change to the implementation of the
Integrate routine requires every program that uses it to be
recompiled.

In my opinion, this is completely contrary to the concept of
a subroutine library as we have understood it for over thirty
years, and a maintenance headache any reasonable person would
want to avoid.