Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) Newsgroups: comp.sw.components Subject: Re: Garbage Collection & ADTs Message-ID: <6593@hubcap.clemson.edu> Date: 26 Sep 89 19:25:42 GMT References: <393@e-street.Morgan.COM> Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu Lines: 20 From amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt): > In this newsgroup, we find other programmers arguing that > programmers should have no direct use for pointers, and so the language can > determine the correct lifetime of dynamic data. Not exactly. The argument is that pointers should only be used by ADT implementors, not by application programmers. > I suggest it is going to prove necessary for the languages which have > this "Pascalian" point of view to close all loopholes (typecasts to > integer, etc.) to prevent the widespread use of C style perfidious > trickery to escape from sensible programming practice. (If you give > them an inch...) The real problem is not the elimination of mechanisms such as Ada's Unchecked_Conversion, but the maintenance of a software engineering perspective; bad code can be written in any language. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu