Re: Ichibah flames, and flames out over, Ada 9X

[asuvax!ennews!enuxhb.eas.asu.edu!koehnema@gatech.edu (Harry Koehnemann)]

In article <1993Feb24.224827.27672@sei.cmu.edu> wellerd@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (David
 Weller) writes:
>As for Ada not being class-based -- GREAT!  I'm convinced that, in the
>long run (which Ada was designed for, right? :-), tagged types will
>prove FAR more versatile.  The problem is SELLING the concept to people
>who are so closed-minded as to believe that class-based languages are
>the "bee's knees" for OO (then again, one could say us "taggers" are
>close-minded, huh?).

Hard to say.  I hear all this hype about tagged types and I see a
few small examples of how they're used with packages/generics/...,
but has anyone implemented a few OO problems with each and compared
them? Semantically, it was easier to add extensiosn to Ada than a
class construct.  But, I think the jury's still out on the "type
extensions > classes" question.

And, maybe it's not as much close minded as cost.  Someone told me
to invest all this money up front on reusable class libraries.  Now
you want me to switch to a non class-based language?  Doubt it will
happen.  People seem to use what they like and OO developers like a
class construct.  Tagged types are not new and for some reason or
another were never embraced by the OO community.  Should be an
interesting next fwew years.
--
Harry Koehnemann			Arizona State University
koehnema@enuxha.eas.asu.edu		Computer Science Department