From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!poe!larryc From: larryc@poe.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Carroll) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: A Pascal Subset of Ada (was: Why Ada is Failing Socially) Message-ID: <1991Jun25.022849.18078@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> Date: 25 Jun 91 02:28:49 GMT Sender: usenet@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (For NNTP so rrn will be able to post) Distribution: comp.lang.ada Organization: Jet Propulsion Lab, AEG/FIST Nntp-Posting-Host: poe List-Id: Someone said something like > A better comparison would be between Pascal & Ada. I came to Ada from a Pascal background, & never understood why people thought it a complex or difficult language. I was writing working code within a week. Within a month the basics had become engrained in my thinking so I automatically used syntax correctly most of the time. I started using features like packages, which I thought (& still think) was a marvelous invention & had absolutely no trouble with. Other parts of Ada caused me more problems, & I've never used tasking. One of the biggest mistakes of AJPO (or whoever made the decision) was to disallow Ada subsets. I think they should have allowed ONE subset, corresponding roughly to Pascal and including packages. We would have had inexpensive & commercially useful compilers much earlier, & disposed of the "Ada is huge" mindset. As a footnote, when I later learned C I organized programs as much like packages as I could with the limited capabilites of C. I ended up with patterns that look a bit like C++.