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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.101.73.78 with SMTP id q14mr1666917pgs.175.1503964153867; Mon, 28 Aug 2017 16:49:13 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.36.110.87 with SMTP id w84mr13490itc.9.1503964153791; Mon, 28 Aug 2017 16:49:13 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!border1.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!peer02.ams1!peer.ams1.xlned.com!news.xlned.com!peer01.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer01.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!v29no497493qtv.0!news-out.google.com!j49ni552qtc.1!nntp.google.com!v29no497485qtv.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 16:49:13 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=174.17.221.250; posting-account=q4eMrwoAAACLbpawAxhGfyqV3g6H0iOT NNTP-Posting-Host: 174.17.221.250 References: User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <4dc188de-802b-41ad-9cdd-b8246eb9a1c7@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Community Input for the Maintenance and Revision of the Ada Programming Language From: faryumg@gmail.com Injection-Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 23:49:13 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Received-Body-CRC: 691095528 X-Received-Bytes: 3274 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:47827 Date: 2017-08-28T16:49:13-07:00 List-Id: For me, Ada is a wonderful language for my engineering calculations, from s= mall, quick one-offs to large simulations of many thousands of lines. (The = thick Ada bindings and extensions to the plotter PLplot are incredibly usef= ul here.) Some people would instead use Octave or Matlab but I find these l= anguages inadequate for a number of reasons. I have built my own tools including operator overloads for real, imaginary,= complex, and integer scalars, mating with overloads for vector and matrix = types. I have overloads for many scalar math functions already included in = Ada along with a number of other tools useful to the engineer and scientist= . Consequently, I can type a line of mathematical code that is more readabl= e than Matlab code, thanks in part to strong typing. Oddly missing from Ada, and commented about on this list before, is why bra= ckets [ ] aren't used for array indexing. This is highly suggestive of the = mathematical notation for vector and matrices and would improve readability= and remove the confusion of what is an array and what is a function. Also missing is multidimensional array slicing. This really needs to be add= ed to remove errors of users' attempts to do something similar using ad hoc= methods. Ada 2005 added standardized real-valued vectors and matrices and a little b= it of linear algebra. Awesome. What is really needed is native bindings to = full high-level libraries of linear algebra: BLAS, LAPACK, possibly via Atl= as. These are super stable and have been used for decades in Fortran and C.= Bindings exist but are too hard to grok and not built-in. Also, high-level= math and special function libraries are needed such as the GNU Scientific = Library or even the Octave libraries. Some will question whether these are = appropriate to include in the language proper and that is a valid conversat= ion. But it is things like this that will help get Ada away from the "embed= ded" stereotype.