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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Bit manipulation
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 04:47:32 GMT
Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy.
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In article <8ubhlh$ejv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  gdemont@my-deja.com wrote:
> I'm sure the users are adult enough to find the most
appropriate
> formulations for _their_ problems after some weeks of Ada
> programming; therefore hiding the availability of modular
types
> _is_ a disservice.


I simply disagree, I am talking about lots of code that I
see written by professional programmers who do not understand
how to do things in Ada. One of the functions of CLA should
be to try to show people how things are done in Ada.

The idea that being an adult guarantees that people know
what they are doing, and that they know the right semantic
level to frame their questions at, is misguided. In fact it
is often VERY difficult to know what semantic level to
frame a question at to get the right answer.

The point is that modular types are occasionally, but only
occasionally the right way of doing things in Ada. C
programmers are used to using this low level approach
all the time, because they do not have alternatives (actually
even in C, I find that programmers often do not use bitfield
specs, simply because they don't know this valuable feature
of the C language).


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