Re: Ada OO Mechanism

[Marin David Condic <condicma@bogon.pwfl.com>]

Dan Nagle wrote:
> 
> Well, my first language (after assembler) was Fortran, and I'm finding
> Ada to be one of the most attractive languages around.
> 
No argument here - I think lots of people are capable of switching from
any one language to any other and knowledge of any one language does not
"cripple" someone's ability to use the other. My point was that there
were lots of Fortran programmers who I knew resisted Ada because it
wasn't Fortran with a slightly different syntax. They were used to a
certain style and didn't want to (or know how to) put it aside and look
at Ada without the preconceived notions.

> I think both Fortran and Ada are high level languages designed for
> a particular pupose(s) and which are both very pratical languages
> for programming.  Both exhibit a high degree of awareness of and
> sympathy to optimization issues, and generally with issues of
> what's going on under-the-hood.
> 
I'm glad you mention the "sympathy for optimization" aspects. Ada took a
lot of dings in its early days for being slow. I think it was a case of
compiler writers not yet understanding the language and building partial
implementations which wound up hamstrung when the more complicated
features were to be addressed. That always bothered me because I didn't
see anything in the language rules which would make it inherently
inefficient. Obviously, these days, good quality optimization is being
done and Ada code tends to be on a par with Fortran for speed. (In most
cases - YMMV - implementation dependent - other general disclaimers! :-)

> 
> I believe the Fortran standards committee is looking at Ada as they
> work out how OO will appear in Fortran.
> 
It would be wise for any standards committee to look at how things are
done in other languages. I think Ada has a lot to offer in the way of
insights on how to go about implementing OO in a "general purpose"
language.


> Agreed.  What's interesting to me is how different folks can program
> in the same language and come away with such different viewpoints.
> To me, Pascal has always been baby-Fortran with a lot of restrictive
> rules (and the unspoken claim that following the rules meant you'd
> never make a logic error!).
> 
I had always considered the block-structured, declare-before-use,
"restrictive rules" aspects of Pascal (along with its small size in the
original incarnation) was dramatically different from Fortran. But I
suppose it is closer to Fortran than, say, Lisp. So I guess there are
perspective issues too.

MDC
-- 
Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
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