On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 5:59 PM, Paul Koning <paul_kon...@dell.com> wrote: >> ... >> >> 2) I like headers because they are specifications (they aren't, but >> what can I do if one believe so? nothing). > > I think that's a matter of opinion, and language-specific as well.
I disagree that it is 'a matter of opinion'. It is not. The concepts we are discussing are specific and concrete, they are not abstract. We are not talking religion or morality. It's not a philosophical subject. > C is such a loose language that applying the notion of "specification" is > hard. Ada is quite another story. From what little I know of it, I would go > along with the Ada experts' comments. Just like any other language, Ada has declarations and definitions. The Ada people call their headers 'specifications', because a lot of program specifications are placed in those headers. But they are not specifications in a sense that you can have multiple implementations of them. I.e. there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between Ada package declarations and package bodies. Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken. > > And as an implementer of large C/C++ based embedded systems, I tend to the > view that, while some programmers don't think of headers as specifications, > they should, and doing so is helpful to achieving high quality. > > paul How do headers thought of specifications are helpful in achieving high quality? please give us a concrete example of a case that not having the headers provides less quality.
