Re: Outside view (still): Development process in the Ada community

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

> "Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
>
> > What makes languages brittle is when they accumulate ill thought out
> > junk that does not work well and cannot be easily modified.
>
> And what makes languages rigid is that they fail to incorporate good
> ideas that do work out well and have been widely praised.

In my view, it is more a problem of deciding what to include in the
language and what to include in the libraries written in the language.
Ada, C++, Java, C#, and Ruby, to name a few, are designed so
one can extend the core functionality with libaries.   The very idea
of extensible types/classes, enables us to build powerful functionality
such as CLAW, GtkAda, JEWL, CAMP, and many other software
frameworks.   These frameworks, in turn, let us build applications.

Earlier languages such as COBOL, PL/I, and Fortran were less extensible
and certainly characterized by a kind of brittleness.  Perhaps I should say,

earlier versions of these languages since all three have gone through
considerable revision.   Someone at IBM even mentioned that there
would be an OOP version of PL/I someday.  That was four years ago
and we still have not seen it published.

Dr. Dewar is correct in his view that the designers of Ada have taken
great pains to avoid including language features that could be better
implemented as library modules.   The question is whether these
libraries should be part of the standard Annexes.   Should be expand
the Annexes to include generalize GUI specifications,  Database
specifications, etc?   The answer is not so simple.   When one realizes
that the vast majority of desktop software is written for the monopolisic
operating system from one company,  it is all too easy to capitulate and
agree to facilitating that monopoly even further.    Some of us would
hope that such a thing would not happen to Ada, even at the risk of
limiting Ada's popularity.

From other postings in this thread, it is clear that capitulation is not
necessary.   There are bindings in Ada that support the operating
system from the "dark side" as well as bindings for those operating
systems one might classify as "open."     All this has happened
without adding features to the language that are platform-specific.

I'd say that, despite its failure to become popular, Ada is evolving
as it should as a language.   We do need more tools, development
environments,  GUI builders, and debugging environments, but those
are not a concern of the language designers.   Rather, they are the
concern of people who use the language as it is designed.

Richard Riehle