Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request

[jayessay <nospam@foo.com>]

kevin.cline@gmail.com (Kevin Cline) writes:

> "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG"
> > Brian May wrote:
> > >>>>>>"Marc" == Marc A Criley <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com> writes:
>
> > > I can't understand the trend in the other direction towards languages
> > > like PHP, if you make a typo in a function name for instance, you
> > > won't realize until that like of code is executed, and even then you
> > > might miss the error message (for instance if it is not on screen).
> 
> If your Ada code raises Constraint_Error, you won't realize that until
> you execute it.  I don't see the big difference between a
> Constraint_Error and a missing function error.  Since the compiler
> can't catch all the errors, I still have to test.  And if I'm going to
> test anyway, trivial errors like misspelled function names will be
> discovered pretty quickly.

In practice, I have found Kevin's position here to be exactly right.
Typos are found immediately.  The real problem here is that static
typing (certainly as found in non formal type systems like
Ada/C++/Eiffel/etc.) solves a problem that is actually fairly trivial.
Note: The _solution_ is highly _non_ trivial.


> > I have to say that for most applications, I would rather
> > have as much static analysis done up front as possible. This
> > substantially reduces the need for testing for non-mission
> > critical things.
> 
> I'm skeptical of this argument.  Are you saying that you have no
> problems delivering code that has never been tested?

I would go beyond Kevin here and claim that the proposition (as much
static analysis up front for most applications) is exactly backward.
In nearly all applications this basically becomes a recipe for "naval
gazing".


/Jon

-- 
'j' - a n t h o n y at romeo/charley/november com