From: William Clodius <wclodius@lanl.gov>
Subject: Re: should I be interested in ada?
Date: 1999/02/22
Date: 1999-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <36D1DFCC.167E@lanl.gov> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 7aslfp$gpq$1@plug.news.pipex.net
Nick Roberts wrote:
>
> robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> <7aldu1$4q$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> <snip>
> |First, the
> |Ada code is far uglier and less safe than the Fortran code,
>
> Hearsay. This is a totally subjective opinion (either way I suppose), isn't
> it?
All other things being equal, the more code it takes to do something the
more error prone it is. Although all other things are rarely equal, the
FORALL code is very easy for humans and compilers to parse and
understand. Once the programmer understands it he finds it usefull and
uses it a lot so that it does not remain an obsure idiom to those
familar with the language. There is therefore no obvious other quality
to the Ada code that counterballance the negative effects of a much
longer length.
>
> |I really cannot imagine anyone thinking otherwise.
>
> To be honest, I would be interested in seeing a greater variety of opinions
> (please!). Robert does not seem to have procduced any counter-argument to my
> point about the advantages of abstraction.
I don't think anyone will argue with you about the virtues of
abstraction, but every language has a finite definition, and that finite
definition intrinsically limits how well an abstraction can match the
semantics of a specific context. In particular FORALL and WHERE are
abstractions that convey directly the concept of parallelism and array
element relationships that can only be indirectly inferred from your
equivalent. They are abstractions that in practice appear to be most
useful in the context of (high performance) numerics, so they have not
gained wide currency, but application specific abstractions are a very
usefull aspect of domain specific languages, and Fortran continues to
emphasize numerics and high performance in its definition.
> <snip>
--
William B. Clodius Phone: (505)-665-9370
Los Alamos Nat. Lab., NIS-2 FAX: (505)-667-3815
PO Box 1663, MS-C323 Group office: (505)-667-5776
Los Alamos, NM 87545 Email: wclodius@lanl.gov
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1999-02-22 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 89+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1999-02-14 0:00 should I be interested in ada? Phillip Helbig
1999-02-15 0:00 ` Gautier
1999-02-15 0:00 ` Marin David Condic
1999-02-23 0:00 ` David Starner
1999-02-16 0:00 ` Ken Thomas
1999-02-17 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-18 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-18 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-19 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-20 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-22 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-22 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-02-24 0:00 ` White rabbit (was: should I be interested in ada?) dennison
1999-02-25 0:00 ` Alice books " JP Thornley
1999-02-25 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-02-20 0:00 ` should I be interested in ada? robert_dewar
1999-02-20 0:00 ` Steve Doiel
1999-02-19 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-19 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-20 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-22 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-19 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-19 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Phillip Helbig
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Dan Nagle
1999-02-18 0:00 ` nabbasi
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-19 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-19 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-21 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-02-19 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-20 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-21 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-21 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-22 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Dan Nagle
1999-02-19 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Dan Nagle
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Peter Hermann
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Joel Seidman
1999-02-18 0:00 ` fraser
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1999-02-20 0:00 ` fraser
1999-02-18 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-18 0:00 ` nabbasi
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-20 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-22 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-22 0:00 ` William Clodius [this message]
1999-02-23 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-22 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-23 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-25 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-25 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-02-24 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-26 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1999-02-27 0:00 ` Semantic info pragmas (was: should I be interested in ada?) Nick Roberts
1999-03-01 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu
1999-03-01 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1999-02-24 0:00 ` should I be interested in ada? William Clodius
1999-02-24 0:00 ` William Clodius
1999-02-25 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-25 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-26 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-20 0:00 ` Hartmut H. Schaefer
1999-02-20 0:00 ` bill
1999-02-21 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-21 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-22 0:00 ` dennison
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox