Re: A Pascal Subset of Ada (was: Why Ada is Failing Socially)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1991Jun27.074515.9755@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:
>[accurate and detailed description of deficiencies of Modula-2 relative
> to Ada deleted]
>
>I was just kidding, Mike! Surely you know by now I'm a die-hard Ada fan.
>Modula-2 was an interesting way-station on the road to software engineering
>languages, but not an end in itself.

Of course I knew you were kidding. But I thought outlining some of the
"little" differences would help other readers to understand how well-
thought-out Ada is, in the main, and what a pleasure it is to use compared
with the alternatives I can think of.

I give an exam problem quite frequently on the "too many notes" theme.
Students must, for three different languages, outline two features that
could be eliminated without having a disastrous effect on what could be 
done with the language. Everything is so integrated in Ada that it's
quite hard to do. Tasking is orthogonal, but almost nothing else is.

Mike