Re: Ada generics

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@arcor.de>]

On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 11:10 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:45:27 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 14:51 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> > 
> >> I find "вода" far more descriptive! (:-))
> > 
> > I wouldn't hesitate to write "вода" in a Russian only program.
> 
> Ah, but then you are in a big trouble, because "вода", "воде", "водой",
> "воды", "водами", "водах" would all be equivalent in terms of what they
> describe, i.e. "water", "lack of content", "confusion making", "being
> ignorant", "alcohol drink", "time passed", "equivalence", "being down"?
> Should Ada compilers learn Russian inflection rules?

Declination etc. can be overcome by object oriented spelling.
Always use the nominative, and have ":=" etc. indicate the other
cases. :-)

As for ambiguity, English is full of it, too. "Springs" has at
least three different meanings I can think of. The plural is
actually used in one package naming idiom (package - plural,
type - singular). So if you have an ASCII 7bit named Springs
package, what's in it?


> The idea that programs should look like COBOL is just wrong.

Having looked at Cobol from time to time, I don't agree.
I find it neither verbose nor unclear. (Fortran >= 95 uses far
more words in some cases.)

> >> Natural language words (even pictographs)
> >> describe absolutely nothing but themselves. 
> > 
> > (How can you be certain of this? :-)
> 
> As a proof consider a human being who does not know written Russian.

So to a Russian, a Russian language word describes something. Right?


> And run into mess. Can you tell me what is what without resorting to a
> binary editor in the following:
> 
> К, K, Κ, Қ

Same as 1 and l, O and 0, nothing new here.
BTW, I don't need a binary editor for distinguishing similar shapes.
An editor that informs about its characters is enough. (This character
thing on the screen should be an object, anyway.)


>  How are you support identifiers
> like "man-eating," (not to be mixed with "man eating")?

Like before: identifiers of a formal language still permit adding
clarity. Man_Eating_Activity, or Man_Eater, plus comments,
etc. whatever fits best. 



> > Mathematicians use full words almost all the time when they
> > explain their reasoning to human readers. 
> > 
> > echo "Let I ⊂ N be a finite index set. For all k ∈ I, P(k)." | wc
> >       1      15      58
> 
> Huh, none of these words is an *identifier*! They just don't use
> descriptive identifiers, neither for free variables, nor for functions.

I was referring the the "uncompiled math source code" and its use
of full words in math declarations, definitions, proofs and so on.
Which also include "For all".
Doesn't
 "Let I ⊂ N be ..."
look quite similar to
 "declare subtype I is N ..."?

OTOH, there is one more argument in favor of π and other symbols:
mathematicians will feel at home.


> > These are not character set and casing issues, and you know it. :-)
> 
> But ss = ß wasn't either!

I think it has all to do with permitted character sets in Ada 2005
and the case insensitivity rules. 

> BTW, nobody answered if "іf" and "аccess" were legal Ada 2005 identifiers.
> Are they?

Randy pointed you to the answer in the manual I think; the AARM
specifically talks about these words. Or are you saying the RM doesn't
answer this question?