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: 103376,52fd60a337c05842 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-15 07:19:47 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!cox.net!p02!news2.east.cox.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D0B4CCC.7010104@telepath.com> From: Ted Dennison User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ada paper critic References: <3D0A1293.5000005@ozemail.com.au> <3D0A399C.EF6F1BD9@acm.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 14:19:48 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.12.51.201 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cox.net X-Trace: news2.east.cox.net 1024150788 68.12.51.201 (Sat, 15 Jun 2002 10:19:48 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 10:19:48 EDT Organization: Cox Communications Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26022 Date: 2002-06-15T14:19:48+00:00 List-Id: Immanuel Scholz wrote: > Actually he is the only one trying to filter out some arguments AGAINST ada > (sometimes more destructive than constructive). True. Unfortunately, all his points range from 180 degrees wrong to just ignorant. When someone is so wrong so consistently over so much stuff, you have to think that we are dealing with a case where someone has an agenda and it trying to make the facts fit it instead of the other way around. > (Nevertheless, I think that giving the same syntax to Arrays and functions > is good, not bad.) We've actually had a lot of discussion here about that. Almost everyone who ever complains about it is an ex-C programmer who's main problem always boils down to "it doesn't look like C". I have very little patience for people who have problems with Ada not looking like C. Ada was just about the most thouroughly designed language ever, while C was thrown together in a lab over the weekend. You might not agree with all of the reasoning, but at least there is a rational reason for nearly every difference Ada has. On the other hand, most of the approaches C took were based on either historical accidents, spontaneious whims, or whatever was the quickest hack to solve a language problem that day. Perhaps one or two good things came out of it, but there's no good coherent design in there at all. The only reason people are still using it is that the lab guys who created it built the first Unix with it, not because the language itself is any good. Thus, arguing that all languages should use the same features as C is like saying all piles of trash should have bannana peels and moudly oranges on the bottom because that's the way the biggest mound in the dump ended up.