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,f51e93dacd9c7fca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-18 21:53:35 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!cox.net!p02!news2.east.cox.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D100E10.6030507@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: status of Ada STL? References: <3d0ce154_5@news.bluewin.ch> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 04:53:33 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.12.51.201 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cox.net X-Trace: news2.east.cox.net 1024462413 68.12.51.201 (Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:53:33 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:53:33 EDT Organization: Cox Communications Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26350 Date: 2002-06-19T04:53:33+00:00 List-Id: Russ wrote: > The length of the symbol is one measure of complexity, but what > bothers me even more than its length is that ":=" is just plain ugly. Only because you aren't used to looking at it yet (and *are* used to looking at "="). To me, and probably most other Ada programmers, "=" in assignments looks ugly (which is one of the reasons why you are getting such an unexpected negative reaction). > I'm a pretty good programmer in C++ and Python, and I'm trying to > learn Ada too. I constantly forget to put in the colon and have to go > back and put it in. It's a minor nuisance, yes, but a totally And I have the same problem with C++, until I get my mind fully switched over. So what? > himself, "Let's see, am I using Ada now, or am I using a language with > standard syntax?" {guffaw} There is no such thing as "standard syntax" for programming languages. Fortran doesn't use either "=" or "==" for equality. Cobol, which is by far the most widely used language in existence, doesn't use symbols at all. Algol, Pascal, Modula-2, Modula-3, Eiffel, VHDL, Oberon, and Oberon-2 all use very similar notations to Ada. APL I believe uses an arrow for assignment, while J (an ASCII version of APL) uses "=:" and "=.". Lisp uses "set" for assignment and uses "=" only for numeric comparisons. When learning a new programming language, you have to learn the syntax. Insisting its syntax is bad simply because it doesn't match one or two other languages you are used to using is the height of parrochialism.