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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-17 15:15:54 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!swiss.ans.net!cmcl2!thecourier.cims.nyu.edu!thecourier.cims.nyu.edu!nobody From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Array mappings Date: 17 Dec 1994 12:41:54 -0500 Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Message-ID: <3cv7t2$no2@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> References: <9412061309.AA02026@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> <3c4g1u$uh6@watnews1.watson.ibm.com> <3cd4ju$11h@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <3ckd14$1cqf@watnews1.watson.ibm.com> <3csnqi$3ee@felix.seas.gwu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: gnat.cs.nyu.edu Date: 1994-12-17T12:41:54-05:00 List-Id: Mike, you sure have posted lots of messages on the Fortran array issue. My own feeling is that this is a nice feature, but not particularly critical. Having to reorder array subscripts is not exactly the biggest barrier to the use of Ada arrays in Fortran programs! You ask if vendors explicitly ran around trying to "dig up" this market. I doubt it. Instead they probably assumed that this was not a major issue, because no customers bought it up. As for it being a possibly lucrative market, I VERY much doubt it. THere were much more important targets of opportunity than this one. It is true that it would not have been very hard to implement, which just goes to show the estimate of value placed on this feature by vendors, and personally I think that this was a reasonable estimate. Ada 9X requires this support. Whether that requirement is justified remains to be seen. That will really show whether Mike is right. If we see a huge army of Fortran programmers suddenly saying "great, now that I can write my subscripts the "right" way round in Ada 95, I will switch to using Ada", then we will know that Mike was rigt, and that Ada vendors missed an important opportunity. Note: Many Fortran programmers are moving to C, C doesn't have any help for Fortran array ordering, and I never heard of this being an adoption barrier.