From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c406e0c4a6eb74ed X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!a6202946!not-for-mail From: Jeffrey Carter Organization: jrcarter commercial-at acm [period | full stop] org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 MSIE X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> <6F2Yc.848$8d1.621@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 21:01:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.184.8.142 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net 1094418074 63.184.8.142 (Sun, 05 Sep 2004 14:01:14 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 14:01:14 PDT Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3344 Date: 2004-09-05T21:01:14+00:00 List-Id: Kevin Cline wrote: > I've come to the same conclusion. Once you decide to test code before > you write it, strong typing loses most of it's value. On the other > hand, if I'm working on code without a good set of automated tests, > then strong typing is a very nice thing to have. For software of typical complexity, testing sufficient to prove the absence of errors takes longer than the allowable schedule for any project I've ever worked on. Testing in the real world cannot be counted on to find all errors. Since testing cannot be counted on to catch all errors, anything else that finds errors may catch errors that testing will miss. There is a synergy between the Ada features that find errors during compilation (of which strong typing is only one) and testing. It is a documented fact that errors cost less to fix the earlier they are found, so errors found during compilation save money compared to those found during testing. The cost of fixing an error is proportional to the time spent making the correction, so errors found during compilation take less time to fix than those found during testing. If time to market is a concern, using a language that finds more errors during compilation will decrease the time to deployment. The facts do not support a claim that testing is as time or cost efficient as detecting errors during compilation. -- Jeff Carter "To Err is human, to really screw up, you need C++!" St�phane Richard 63