Re: Ada [and the object oriented metaphor]

[mjl@cs.rit.edu]

In article <7115@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>   The definition of "object-oriented" varies widely, but even if we
>   accept this definition, we need only obtain Classic Ada (or some 
>   equivalent preprocessing product) in order to use inheritance in
>   an Ada environment, pending more direct support in Ada 9X.

The mind boggles: Hoare's Turing Lecture concerns about the safety of
the world have now been compounded by an order of magnitude!  I'm a
proponent of the OO approach, but this instance is all too reminiscent
of the "bag on the side of a bag" system of design so eloquently
described in Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine." Ada is already a
tarpit of complexity.  While the natural world evolves by selection,
Ada seems destined to "evolve" by accretion.

Mike Lutz

P.S.  I'm can hardly wait for AdaLog and CommonAda, preprocessors
providing all the "benefits" of Ada as well as the logic programming
model of PROLOG and the list processing capabilities of CommonLisp.
[1/2 :-)]
Mike Lutz	Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
UUCP:		{rutgers,cornell}!rochester!rit!mjl
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