Re: is Ada dying?

[John English <je@brighton.ac.uk>]

"Robert*@" wrote:
> Java the language is certinly simple, at least simpler than C++ which it
> is replacing. Having a huge library is a Good Thing (TM), and it have
> nothing to do with the language itself. Use the classes you need, do not
> use those you do not need. Having huge libraries means code reuse and faster
> development process.

Smalltalk and Forth are both syntactically simpler languages than Java,
both with large APIs. That doesn't make them better than Java.

Huge libraries means you need a huge memory, and a permanently-handy
API reference. You have to remember the names of the classes (which
were invented arbitrarily, usually sensibly but not always), the names
of the methods (again, not always sensible) and the order and types
of the parameters. Case sensitivity doesn't help (and a sure-fire Good
Thing would be a compiler that suggested RuntimeException in its error
message if you typed RunTimeException, or Hashtable if you typed HashTable,
or HashMap if you typed Hashmap).

At least language features are usually informed by some rationale and
the need to define a rational syntax which makes life bearable for both
compiler writer and user.

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