Re: The A-Z of Programming Languages: Ada, interview with S. Tucker Taft

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Marc A. Criley schrieb:
> Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>> Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>>> Ludovic Brenta schrieb:
>>>> http://www.techworld.com.au/article/223388/-z_programming_languages_ada?pp=1 
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Has Ichbiah been right to be skeptical of Ada 95's OO?
>>> It does seem to have, uhm, rich structure, seen from a
>>> learners point of view.
>>
>> This prompts the question: how would Ichbiah have implemented OOP in
>> Ada?
> 
> Perhaps barely, if at all.

This seems surprising because classwide programming and
dynamic dispatch seem to have been among the requirements of Ada 9X.
(I got this idea from browsing the archives.)

In an excerpt from a letter sent by Ichbiah to the Ada 9X group,
a part of which is quoted in Meyer's OOSC2, Ichbiah appears to
be addressing the increased complexity of the language,
which is caused by the then new features and their combinations.
He computes it to be approaching ~60_000 combinations.
(I'll look up the details.)  Might Ichbiah have thought that
by some 80/20 rule, you can overdo things if you create Ada 9X
the way it was around 1992?

IIUC what Taft says in the interview, Ichbiah didn't like the
_way_ OOP was to be implemented. OTOH he had been working on a
Simula compiler at INRIA.  So maybe OOP alone was not the elephant.