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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: discriminant questions
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:29:04 +0200
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Date: 2011-09-21T12:29:04+02:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:03:21 +0200, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> Accessors are in the class of very fashionable attractors.

Maybe, but that is an argument to irrationality...

> Wait!  These features do not seem to attract all programmers
> alike.  For example, Objective-C's dot notation is not welcome
> by all Objective-C programmers.  So there is some resistance.

Dot notation and accessors are different issues. I have nothing against
allowing users to use whatever sugar for the operations they define. This
by no means limits the interfaces and implementations they choose.

On the contrary to that, Accessor is a certain implementation imposed on
the programmer, there is no way no express user-defined operations of
certain kind otherwise. This is very bad.
 
> Now we see
> 
>   Function_Name (P) := ...;

I have no problem with this syntax because Ada never tried to syntactically
distinguish function calls vs objects and literals vs indexing. Which was
right.

> Accessors do so by covering mechanism, not showing it.

I don't see it this way. What I see is a certain pattern imposed on the
programmer. This pattern is an object-oriented one of worst kind of what
OOP is hated for, not without a reason.

It is amazing how Ada gathers worst patterns around all paradigms in the
reach:

1. Accessors = bad OOP
2. Conditional expressions = bad FP
3. Dynamic pre-/post-conditions = bad DbC
4. Generic container library = bad GP
...

> We do not even get
> 
>   Name [P] := ...;
> 
> which would at least follow the stipulated Ada tradition of
> having special syntax for special mechanism!

That is a discussion for another day. There nothing special in array
indexing.

> Aspects increasingly help quickly work around language design.

I would not be so sure about that.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de