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 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,35b27ed90ca6e504 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-03-24 12:59:09 PST Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!marble.uknet.ac.uk!warwick!zaphod.crihan.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!scsing.switch.ch!sicsun!disuns2.epfl.ch!lglsun!magnus From: magnus@lglsun.epfl.ch (Magnus Kempe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada 9X _has_ "class" Message-ID: <1993Mar24.164424@lglsun.epfl.ch> Date: 24 Mar 93 16:16:38 GMT References: <1993Mar19.213439.2342@evb.com> Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne NNTP-Posting-Host: lglsun6.epfl.ch Date: 1993-03-24T16:16:38+00:00 List-Id: jgg@evb.com (John Goodsen) quotes a lot and writes: : : The 'CLASS attribute is not what you will see in marketing literature. : What you will see in Marketing literature is "tagged types". I have seen a lot of marketing literature touting "inheritance" and "polymorphism", although the programming languages involved did not have such keywords. In addition, I have never seen any ad revolving around "int" for C, "VAR" for Pascal, or "!" for PROLOG. If you have a specific, reasoned proposal for a valid syntax change in Ada 9X, by all means write it. But please, don't resort to fallacious arguments. Marketing droids should know better than throwing keywords around in order to promote Ada (and any other programming language), shouldn't they? The primary goal w.r.t. Ada's syntax is to have a readable and understandable language. It has been explained several times that Ada 9X provides both specific types and classes (a set of related types). These constructs are _so_ different that they should each be subsumed by a specific concept, and these concepts should not be randomly mixed. Since a specific type is _not_ a class, it is quite reasonable to _not_ call it a "class". If you think the distinction does not matter, or is "merely technical", think twice. A tagged type T is _not_ a class: it is _in_ a class (T'class) as well as in the superclasses of T'class (e.g. T_First'class). -- Magnus Kempe "No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap." magnus@lglsun.epfl.ch -- Thomas Jefferson