From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7ee10ec601726fbf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-10 03:11:25 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!195.238.2.15!skynet.be!skynet.be!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!server3.netnews.ja.net!newshost.central.susx.ac.uk!news.bton.ac.uk!not-for-mail From: John English Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: is Ada dying? Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 10:16:24 +0100 Organization: University of Brighton Message-ID: <3BC411E8.1496E06A@brighton.ac.uk> References: <3BC0F75B.51D32B3@adaworks.com> <9pr8gu0tnf@drn.newsguy.com> <3BC1305D.1C6910C@worldnet.att.net> <9prfvm01cqt@drn.newsguy.com> <3BC1C7E3.46046096@worldnet.att.net> <9psm790ojt@drn.newsguy.com> <3BC2F035.FB6AA434@brighton.ac.uk> <9pv25o0ir6@drn.newsguy.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pc2je.it.bton.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: saturn.bton.ac.uk 1002708257 9841 193.62.183.154 (10 Oct 2001 10:04:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@bton.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Oct 2001 10:04:17 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en-gb] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:14135 Date: 2001-10-10T10:04:17+00:00 List-Id: "Robert*@" wrote: > > In article <3BC2F035.FB6AA434@brighton.ac.uk>, John says... > > and a permanently-handy API reference. > > I am confused. > > Are you saying a small standard library which does almost nothing, is > better becuase then the programmer does not have to have an API handy > to remember anything? > > what kind of logic is this? > > so I assume the language you will design will have only 'PUT' and 'GET' in > it, this way no programmer will ever need a manual to use it (and of course > no one will use the language becuase in the real world programmers need to > do more things). No, what I'm saying is that shunting linguistic features (e.g. tasking) into the API increases the memory burden -- linguistic features need a linguistic rationale, whereas with API design you're at the whim of the API designer. You know there's a class containing a method, but your knowledge of the language helps not at all to remember the name of the class or the name of the method or the types and ordering of the parameters. So e.g. slicing a string by writing str.substr(5,4) is less clear IMHO that str(5..9) -- you have to remember that the method is called "substr", not "subString" or "slice" or whatever, and that the first parameter is a zero-based index, and that the second is a length rather than another index. And you can't then apply the same technique to another class like Vector, you have to learn a different method name and set of parameters. You lose orthogonality, basically. ----------------------------------------------------------------- John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk Senior Lecturer | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je Dept. of Computing | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS ** University of Brighton | -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk -----------------------------------------------------------------