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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 2002:a24:fe09:: with SMTP id w9-v6mr1957737ith.36.1528031075482; Sun, 03 Jun 2018 06:04:35 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:a9d:70c2:: with SMTP id w2-v6mr364842otj.2.1528031075342; Sun, 03 Jun 2018 06:04:35 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!goblin3!goblin.stu.neva.ru!news.misty.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!u74-v6no4146327itb.0!news-out.google.com!b185-v6ni4562itb.0!nntp.google.com!u74-v6no4146323itb.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2018 06:04:35 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=47.185.233.194; posting-account=zwxLlwoAAAChLBU7oraRzNDnqQYkYbpo NNTP-Posting-Host: 47.185.233.194 References: <5e86db65-84b9-4b5b-9aea-427a658b5ae7@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <2080b15a-9d16-421f-9015-a9d70b3b5626@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Ada Successor Language From: "Dan'l Miller" Injection-Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2018 13:04:35 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:52871 Date: 2018-06-03T06:04:35-07:00 List-Id: On Sunday, June 3, 2018 at 5:01:31 AM UTC-5, ric....@gmail.com wrote: > Ada is an incredible languages as it is. It doesn't need a successor - it= needs more adoption. I actually agree with this for the most part. Ada needs another compiler (= or at least one of its few compiler vendors to market themselves differentl= y) more than it needs a successor language. The only way that Ada needs a successor is a minor variant that explores la= nguage changes that the ARG doesn't pursue, mostly in the category of great= ideas that would break backwards compatibility on arcane topics. But the = chance that a successor to Ada would restrain itself to strictly being a mi= nor variant is low, which is almost too much risk. Conversely, what has cemented the view that C-family syntax is more readabl= e than Pascal-family syntax is that there are a plethora of C-syntaxed cous= in and sibling languages to C. Ada looks like it is dead-end evolutionary = branch. Evolutionarily-dead-end Ada could have been named: Duckbilled Pla= typus, Dodobird, Coelacanth. Among these Coelacanth is best: thought by m= any to be extinct, but still occasionally found in the wild. What would be healthy for Ada is a new compiler whose front end is implemen= ted as a honey pot to attract researchers to experiment with new variants o= f Ada, as they vaunt their researcwares as The Next Big Thing with much ene= rgy and fanfare. Imagine someone even experimenting with =E2=80=A2exactly= =E2=80=A2 same Ada that we have today but with strictly one topic changed, = either: 1) an entirely different memory model than Ada has today in its storage poo= ls (or should I say, entirely different than the cattle chute that compiler= s & standard-library sends us down today); or 2) an entirely different C-symbol cryptosyntax; or 3) multimethods built-in; or 4) some logic programming other than SPARK; or 5) multistage programming source-code generation (instead of a preprocessor= ); or 6) overt choice of different Ichbiah/Ada83 or Taft/Ada95 or Randy/Ada2020 o= r Rust-esque correctness enforcement; or 7) a hundred other experiments. Hence, the idea earlier in this thread for an Alphard-esque-on-steroids or = Seed7-esque-on-steroids hypoAda on which today's Ada8652* can be implemente= d atop but also on which syntactic or semantic variants can be easily deriv= ed. LLVM is an analogous honeypot for research on the backend. Likewise, = hypoAda could be another honeypot intentionally designed to attract researc= hers to fan the flames of energy among the universities (again) and among t= he tech billionaires (for the first time) regarding Ada. * Ada8652 is all of the ISO 8652 eras: Ada83, Ada95, Ada2005, Ada2012, Ada= 2020, =E2=80=A6