Re: Translating 83 => 9X (Was: Re: Ada 9X objectives)

[jbg@sei.cmu.edu (John Goodenough)]

In article Re: Translating 83 => 9X (Was: Re: Ada 9X objectives) of 5 Oct 89
01:56:29 GMT billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:

>   If you want to get a good idea of what the likely changes will be:
                                               ^^^^^^
>      o ACM SIGADA Ada Letters for the last 5 years or so
>      o Ada 9X revision requests 
>      o proceedings of Tri-Ada and other conferences 
>      o the last chapter of Paul Hilfinger's ACM Distinguished
>          Dissertation, "Abstraction Mechanisms and Language Design"
>
>   are all excellent sources.

These sources BY NO MEANS specify the _likely_ changes in Ada 9X.  These are
sources of suggestions being made, but no one yet knows what the likely
changes might be, because the change requests have not yet been analyzed
against the stated goals of the 9X process, which are:

    "to revise ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A to reflect current essential requirements
    with minimum negative impact and maximum positive impact to the Ada
    community.  The Ada 9X process is a revision and not a redesign of the
    language and should be viewed as a natural part of the language maturation
    process."  [From the Ada 9X Project Plan, January 1989]

In my opinion, this means the goal is to improve the usability of Ada, and
this means fixing problems while not destabilizing the adoption process or the
quality of Ada implementations.  How this can be done will be the subject of
much discussion in the next few years, but major and widespread
incompatibilities certainly are not consistent with the stated goals.

It is certainly premature to suggest that some kind of automatic translator
will be required.  In fact, I think most people involved with the effort would
be appalled if something called an "automatic translator" from Ada 83 to Ada
9X was required.

John B. Goodenough					Goodenough@sei.cmu.edu
Software Engineering Institute				412-268-6391

-- 
John B. Goodenough					Goodenough@sei.cmu.edu
Software Engineering Institute				412-268-6391