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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3ccb707f4c91a5f2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation) Date: 1996/10/15 Message-ID: <1996Oct15.150155.1@eisner>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 189647807 x-nntp-posting-host: eisner.decus.org references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com> x-nntp-posting-user: KILGALLEN x-trace: 845406120/8809 organization: LJK Software newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes: > Therefore, although existing Ada users may be perfectly happy without > GC, it might well be the case that non-Ada users would be attracted to > Ada if it had GC. All is not lost -- it may well happen that Ada will > have GC in a few years. (Several have pointed out that "having GC" is > an implementation issue. Correct, but I think one can reasonably define > "language X has GC" to mean "I am confident that all implementations of > language X now and in the future will have GC". In that sense, Lisp has > GC, but Ada does not (yet).) It seems to me, therefore, that "has GC" does not belong in the standard or in an annex any more than "has an optimizing back end". Standards must leave some areas for implementors to differentiate themselves, or else one will be stuck like Unix or HTML with each implementor striving to add their own source-incompatible "added-value" extensions thereby undercutting the standard. GC, peephole optimizers, and the like can all be left unstandardized without harm to source portability. Larry Kilgallen