From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Niklas Holsti Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: "Usability" (was Re: Map iteration and modification) Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2024 10:14:07 +0200 Organization: Tidorum Ltd Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net EImh9O3qinS2EPfP/VPQaQ+I34x0FhJ4LALc4IDHrOlqJwX2kx Cancel-Lock: sha1:CBlD+2ejkpRj/LnHUZ8O9Ea0BVI= sha256:tcunbbc+IunsAzagLpt4ixt2dv5jluukwhS3fXSLiKs= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Content-Language: en-US In-Reply-To: Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:65967 List-Id: On 2024-01-06 9:03, Randy Brukardt wrote: > "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" wrote in message > news:unafcg$bpv5$7@dont-email.me... >> On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 20:00:37 -0600, Randy Brukardt wrote: >> >>> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" wrote in message >>> news:un64o3$3krch$1@dont-email.me... >>>>> >>>>>> Usability always trumps performance. >>>>> >>>>> That's the philosophy of languages like Python, not Ada. >>>> >>>> Ah, this is why Python is totally unusable? (:-)) >>> >>> I would tend to argue that it is indeed the case that you get dubious >>> results when you put usability first. ... >>> http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/blog/consequences.html >> >> Without reading that, I would never have understood "usability" to mean >> "ease of writing". I learned from early on in my programming career that >> readability was more important than writability. So "using" a language >> doesn't end with writing the code: you then have to test and debug it-- >> basically lick it into shape--then maintain it afterwards. > > Usability is of course not just ease-of-writing, but a lot of people tend to > co-mingle the two. For readability, too little information can be just as > bad as too much. For writability, the less you have to write, the better. I feel that is too narrow a definition of writability (and perhaps you did not intend it as a definition). Before one can start typing code, one has to decide what to write -- which language constructs to use. A systematically constructed, regular language like Ada makes that mental effort easier, even if it results in more keystrokes; a plethora of special-case syntaxes and abbreviation possibilities makes it harder. Perhaps "writability" should even be taken to cover the whole process of creating /correct/ code, and include all the necessary testing, debugging and corrections until correct code is achieved. Here of course Ada shines again, with so many coding errors caught at compile time.