Re: Q: common types?!

[hansonk@cwis.unomaha.edu (Kraig Hanson)]

gamache@rapnet.sanders.lockheed.com writes:


>Tony Leavitt (tony@deepthought.Sgi.COM) wrote:
>: I have a question for all you Ada wizards.  I do not have a lot of experience
>: with Ada (only about 3000 lines), and I have begun to start making a common
>: types package. This package would define all kinds of types for feet, nautical
>: miles, degrees, radians, etc, ad nuasium, for all different kinds and sizes
>: of float and integers.  Am I about to go insane by trying this?  Or, does
>: this exist already on the Internet somewhere?  If I was to attempt to do this
>: how would you recommend about doing it?

>: Here is a sample of what I started to do:
>:
>: package Common_Types is
>[snip]

>I was surprised by the lack of good followups to this post.  Now I can't just
>read the right response, I have to try and write it!  

[snip]

Hmmm...  I never saw the original post, so I didn't get a chance to respond.
As a bit of moral support, you wrote the correct response.

To add more drama to it, RUN-RUN AWAY!  FLEE FROM THE CONCEPT OF Common_Types!
We have a package named precisely that here and it has been nothing but
problems.  It violates (insert any SW engineering term here).  Yea, it's 
easier at first, but those abstractions we did properly are much easier
to maintain, much easier to inspect/review, and much easier to use!  The
best thing you can do is to take the time now to DESIGN how your solution
should be constructed, including maybe a framework of what _all_ (related)
low level types must provide in terms of operations.

Can anyone provide the reference for constructing software components done
at Tri-Ada by some folks from Ohio State?  (Murali Sitarmen (sp?) from EKU?
would know.)  Someone "borrowed" my copy of the paper and I haven't seen
it since.  I found it an excellent reference with several good ideas.

(On a counter-argument note - didn't the STANFINS project have such a 
beast?)

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kraig Hanson           "I'm not a software engineer, but I play one on TV."
Practitioner by day, instructor by night.
hansonk@unomaha.edu                             hansonk@j63.stratcom.af.mil