Re: How badly will C bias in the POSIX standards groups hurt Ada bindi

[sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.com!mksol!mccall@ames.arc. nasa.gov (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <62711@mimsy.umd.edu> alex@cs.umd.edu (Alex Blakemore) writes:

>How much do you want to bet that the language independent specification
>(when it appears in several millenia) looks almost identical to the current
>C bindings?  That ISO wouldnt dream of having the C bindings change more than
>a couple of commas so that they dont upset the C POSIX users, but that they
>wont think twice of asking (nay telling) the Ada community to completely chang
e
>our bindings to conform to their views? (after all, they are not the ones who
>have to use the damn things)

Actually, given that POSIX is based on UNIX and UNIX is built out of
and around C, I would be surprised if they selected something that is
too far from C for a specification language.  It's simply a better fit
for what is being specified.

Personally, I dislike the idea of 'thin' bindings -- all that having
to cross-reference back and forth seems to amount to throwing a
roadblock in front of anyone trying to use the Standard.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.