Re: Ada requires too much typing!

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

On 5/26/10 9:33 PM, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
> Le Wed, 26 May 2010 19:20:00 +0200, Georg Bauhaus
> <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a écrit:
>> Anyway, if understanding text requires more than linear
>> reading, there are arguments in favor of conciseness.
>> UML or any other "bird's eye view" tool show the usefulness
>> of seeing relations between pieces of source text in one place.
> Did you ever heard about Literate Programming ? What do you think about
> it in this area ? (possibly with editor support for that)
>

There even was/is a WEB adaptation for Ada 83
with all the features of the original WEB.
Like the other WEB systems, it can help with PERFORM-like
subdivisions, but not act as a replacement for "powerful"
operators (APL style), or with seeing call chains, say. (The tools
to show the latter are all outside the language, I think.)
    Being able to give detailed procedures as to how an operation
is to be performed (Ada) comes at a price (more things
to specify). Program planners who would rather leave the
programming to the engineers might then say "not my job!"
and go on with writing algorithms very concisely,
not using Ada ;-)  Understanding an algorithm might
be easier without the details...


Hypothesis: Compiler makers don't like the literate programming
tools out there.  Reason: Literate Programming makes your
programming language appear to be less than perfect for
structuring. :-)


IIRC, Robert Dewar once explained how Jean Ichbiah used
Word for writing about Ada and then called macros to
copy Ada text from the Word document to some external file.