[Info-vax] Building for Customers, Revenue

[John Reagan]

On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 1:14:59 PM UTC-4, Shark8 wrote:
> On 9/16/2014 8:28 AM, John Reagan wrote:
> 
> > On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 10:55:11 AM UTC-4, Shark8 wrote:
> 
> >
> >> I think that the point is that C++ was chosen because it was
> >> popular/modern -- yet the programmers still fell into the Y2K trap.
> >
> > No, it was because it was written by somebody in "sales management"
> > and they probably didn't do any design documents, code reviews, or
> > sufficient testing.
> 
> How would that constrain the choice of C++? I mean, unless the marketing 
> had "written in C++!" as a point there's nothing there to force an 
> implementation language one way or the other, right?
>
> 
> > The best hammer won't prevent you from hitting your thumb.
> 
> No, but that's no excuse to remove the blade-shield from your circular 
> saw... or use one that comes w/o a shield.

Sure, Ada's type constraint syntax (not unique to Ada by the way, you see it in Eiffel and others) does provide a set of requirements "built into" the type.  You can implement that in many ways in C++ using objects.  Different tools to solve the problem.

Regardless of language used, the problem existed because the author didn't think of it.  Even if he wrote in Ada, I doubt he wouldn't have written those type constraints that you did.