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From: Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org>
Subject: Re: The greatest feature of the language is ....
Date: 2000/10/06
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To: Wes Groleau <wwgrol@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>
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Date: 2000-10-06T17:38:39+00:00
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Wes Groleau wrote:

> This is not a troll--please, NO LANGUAGE WARS.
>
> Suppose someone wanted to invent a new language.  (I have
> no intention of inventing a new language.  This is just my
> way of making a comparison.)
>
> What is the ONE capability of Ada you would most want to ensure is
> in the new language?
>

Its hard to pick just one. If it had to be just one, I'd say Tasking. The
reason is that almost any new language design is likely to include all the
other popular features of other languages like some form of OO programming,
maybe some level of type safety (nobody *really* wants to reinvent C do
they?) maybe some kind of generic template, etc. But if you really want to
be able to take advantage of the possibilities of multiprocessors,
multiprogramming, etc. then having tasks is far superior to OS calls to
spawn threads or forks or other stuff that gets done as a kind of
after-the-fact patch. Tasking is probably Ada's most unique feature.

>
> and/or
>
> What is the ONE capability of Eiffel you would most want to ensure is
> in the new language?
>

Don't know much about Eiffel. I hear tell that it will keep your rockets
from crashing when management makes bad decisions though. Maybe that feature
should be included. :-) :-) :-) (Talk about starting flame wars!)

MDC
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