Currency Quotes

[hepburn m stroman]

>From article <8224 at hubcap.clemson.edu>, by billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu at hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ):
>> From goudreau at larrybud.rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau):
>>> your original complaint about
>>> units(1), which must have embarassed you horribly when you found out
>>> about floating (gasp!) currency exchange rates.
>> 
>>    [I replied:]  Right.  My self-managed IRA had a total return of 
>>    44.43% last year; how embarassing.  Maybe I should stop watching 
>>    the Nightly Business Report so often, huh?
> 
>    Oh, by the way, Bob, you'll be pleased to know that Reuters (which
>    supplies the Nightly Business Report with its market data, including
>    currency quotes) is delivering that market data using Ada software...
>    the introduction of Ada technology into Reuters was described at the
>    ACM SIGAda Tri-Ada '88 conference.  Sorry you missed it!!!
> 
> 
Is that all that relevant?  Software is written in a variety of
for a variety of reasons.  Reuters chose Ada. So what?  It could have
been a choice based on convenience, or government requirement (which
seems to be the big reason for using Ada).  If your comment is intended
to show Ada is supeior because a _real_ product uses it, then perhaps I
should list the hundreds (thousands?) of commercial products that use C
(or cobol or fortran).  Many applications were and are being developed
in them.  Since more programs are written in C, I suppose your logic
must lead to the concluion C is superior (after all, more real software
is written in it)

Oh, and about your IRA.  I'm impressed, but it is irrelevant to your
point in your original post (namely, that units() was an example of bad
C coding practice.) As a software engineer, you
really should have researched  units() and discovered the use of a data
file before your initial posting. Also, to add validity to your original
point, it would have been nice to see some proof that the few programs
described were C-language products.
>    Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe at hubcap.clemson.edu
>