Re: Ada ad in Embedded Systems Programming stinks

[Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>]

|   That seems the best compromise. After all, remember that the user who is
|   most likely to need further help is also the user least likely to be able
|   to read the RM. If you really know the RM well, you shouldn't be making
|   errors in the first place, and you certainly should be able to figure
|   them out :-)

kidding aside, I think this is a harmful view, because it assumes that
those who are experts in a particular area of the language will also be
experts in _all_ areas, and while possibly not _obviously_ wrong, this
nevertheless has the unfortunate side effect of discouraging people from
exploring new areas.  this is what happens with C and C++, for instance,
where once you get some particular way of doing something to work, you are
not likely to look into ill-described alternatives.  Ada should encourage
programmers to become better programmers, not more "get it to work, dammit"
programmers.

programmers who _don't_ have readily available copies of the reference
manual for the language(s) and libraries they use are a dangerous breed.

#<Erik>
--
Microsoft is not the answer.  Microsoft is the question.  NO is the answer.