Re: Clause "with and use"

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

I don't think Ada should slavishly start emulating whatever exists in 
some other languages, but its worth looking at what things like C++ or 
Java have that Ada doesn't in so far as it covers some significant 
*capability*. C++ has the STL - it would be worth trying to get 
something like that into Ada. Java has a large library with other 
capabilities - Ada ought to consider that as a possibility. If we're 
talking syntax/semantics, is there something similar - like having a 
more class-like package construct? I'd even be willing to debate the 
relative merits of something like the method->object versus 
objec->method syntax since it seems to at least be non-trivial (although 
I think it doesn't really add any *capability* - just a syntax that 
might be more expressive of a given idiom and hence, probably not worth 
the effort.)

In "Ada Letters (Vol XXIII, Num 3) Pascal Leroy outlined some of the 
changes expected in Ada and that shows some good examples of the kinds 
of things the ARG was willing to look into changing. Mutually dependent 
types, Type Stubs, Access To Private Units, etc. They seem to address 
some real limitation that makes it tough to express certain things in 
Ada. I don't see the "with and use" or the "+=" as being in the same 
category - they don't fix a hinderance to expressing something - except 
in a trivial way.

The point is, let's not over-burden the ARG & compiler vendors with 
things that are not going to give the programmer something they couldn't 
get in some similar way with a little extra typing.

MDC


Preben Randhol wrote:
> On 2003-11-10, Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> wrote:
>>
>>It would be more productive to figure out if there is some major 
>>shortcoming in Ada or some major capabilities that Ada could use rather 
>>than worry about relatively trivial syntax changes that don't address 
>>some gaping hole in Ada's capabilities.
> 
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> Preben


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