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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,8c0fcfc0a87e61fc X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!novia!transit3.readnews.com!news-out.readnews.com!postnews3.readnews.com!not-for-mail Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 07:13:14 -0400 From: "Peter C. Chapin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: simple question on long_float/short_float References: <4ca4fff8$0$2437$4d3efbfe@news.sover.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <4ca5c307$0$2454$4d3efbfe@news.sover.net> Organization: SoVerNet (sover.net) NNTP-Posting-Host: 765f0c88.news.sover.net X-Trace: DXC=A4ViR5::WUUlR<856?E;9lYEDY[n6HHk7]mD\9P9 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sover.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:14343 Date: 2010-10-01T07:13:14-04:00 List-Id: On 2010-09-30 20:29, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote: > This trend to update computer languages every few years seems to result > in a language first starting as simple, with the basic features, then it > gets more and more complicated and bloated as more features are stuffed > in it to make it more cool and modern. With time computer languages > become too complex to understand by mere mortals, unless one has a PhD > in computer science. I agree there definitely is that trend. Of course part of the problem is that old features can only be removed with extreme difficulty since most language communities want backward compatibility. Thus the "size" of a language tends to be a monotonically increasing function of time. In fact, this is one reason why I appreciate Ada. Although the language is large and complicated, my perception is that new features are added to it conservatively and only after extensive deliberation. I'm not saying other communities don't deliberate extensively as well, but it seems like some languages (C++?) grow more quickly than is good for them. Also Ada has a mechanism (pragma Restrictions) where one can selective remove features from the language depending on one's needs. I don't know of any other language that offers a standard way to make it smaller. Finally there is SPARK. The language itself is actually quite simple and basic. Of course fully using the annotations and doing all the associated proofs introduces its own complexity, but much of that could be skipped if desired. Peter