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From: jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony)
Subject: Re: OO, C++, and something much better!
In-Reply-To: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu's message of 29 Jan 1997 08:31:46 -0500
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References: <JSA.97Jan16141937@alexandria> <dewar.854327202@merv>
	<01bc0c4d$8a0108f0$c318b993@jarvisb> <dewar.854377413@merv>
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Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 02:23:26 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.object:60622 comp.lang.c++:244522 comp.lang.ada:56908 comp.lang.smalltalk:50554 comp.lang.eiffel:18029

In article <dewar.854544010@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> I am not arguing for a dogmatic "developers should be arrested if they
> attempt to execute their code" approach

Agreed.


>, but it is a very good idea for people to understand that formal
> reasoning and careful reading of code *before* it is tested is a
> powerful tool for generating reliable software.  And this applies
> not matter *what* language things are written in,

The problem is, this requires that the people involved can actually do
this sort of reasoning and conceptualization and can do it with some
concentration.  It also requires that they are actually comfortable
with being "careful" and not fidgeting, and possess >5 second
attention spans.  In IME, most people in the _SW_ biz are not up to
this.


> although in practice some languages will encourage this approach
> more than others.  As I mentioned earlier, if you ask a roomful of
> Ada programmers how many depend on the debugger, only about half

Well, I will say that I really dislike debugging.  It seems like one
of those stupid "adventure" games.  If you want to do that kind of
detective work - go be a real detective, it's got to be more
interesting and more important.  But, that doesn't mean I'm not glad
to have a good debugger when I really need it.  In fact this lower
level of usage makes me demand much more of a debugger in facilities,
capabilities, and friendliness, as it is already annoying to have to
use it in the first place.


/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com

