Re: Properties

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:27:12 +0000 (UTC), Warren wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov expounded in
> news:vkz3nbgxubt1$.11vfo4rwuzegd.dlg@40tude.net: 
> 
>> On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:58:03 +0000 (UTC), Warren
>> wrote: 
> 
>>> IMO, the language is complex 
>>> enough without introducing new features.
>> 
>> It became complex because wrong features were adopted
>> without reviewing the language core for real problems. 
> 
> In fairness to those who participated, it is not trivial to 
> forsee all of those "real problems". There was no doubt, no 
> total agreement either for each standard. 

Yes, but when faced a "real problem," people usually agree. Many features
introduced in recent times address rather virtual problems.

>> The main problem is that ARG considers individual features
>> having no strategic plan of Ada evolution. Only Ada 95 had
>> a recognizable plan behind it.
> 
> That is probably not totally fair. It is very good that they 
> continually evaluate for improvements, rather than just allow 
> the language to become stale.

I don't object that. The point is that the criterion for adopting a feature
should not have been "it is too difficult," or "nobody asked for this."
There should be a master plan of what language we want Ada to become.

Ada 95 had a clear idea of bringing in OO in a safe, properly typed way,
not compromising performance. That was a great success, IMO.

>  I just hope that they don't get 
> too liberal in the new language features department.

Absolutely. My dream were for them to review the existing features and
rework the language core in order to unify them, making the language more
regular.

> Where I do like seeing "new features" is in the standard 
> library support. Whatever you can leverage in std libraries, 
> shortens your routine development time and testing. It also 
> makes Ada more out-of-the-box friendly for routine 
> applications.

That is true, but there is a danger that the language deficiencies would
influence the library design. We have an awful string processing library
because there is no class of string types. The container library based on
generics does not support array views. We will never be able to create a
standard GUI library (on the Ada level of safety and usability, I mean),
because types, tasks, protected objects don't play good with each other,
etc.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de