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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b47b15fda2aeb0b2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: Two ideas for the next Ada Standard Date: 1996/09/03 Message-ID: <50gelc$2le@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 178120186 references: <50aao3$3r88@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <322B5BB0.422E@joy.ericsson.se> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia nntp-posting-user: ok newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-09-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jonas Nygren writes: >Coming from a C/C++ background I have had a hard time to adjust to >many of the Ada features (geez, I have never casted so much before in >my programming life). This puzzles me greatly. I've been hacking Ada for about two years now, and *except when trying to interface to C code* find that I have very few conversions. (I take it that "casted"---IS there such a word form?---refers to conversions.) It would be interesting to know what you are doing that makes conversion common. >Still, there are some things I have a problem to adjust to. One is >P(X) instead of the popular X.P notation. The Pop family of languages has always identified F(X) and X.F. Are you are happy to see x.sqrt.print instead of print(sqrt(x))? If not, _why_ not? In Smalltalk, after all, sqrt _is_ a method in the floating point class... Algol 68 and COBOL use "field OF record" instead of "record.field". Is that _really_ such a big deal? Hmm. It would be interesting to determine the preferences of - people whose native language is SVO, like English Prediction: subject.method(object) preferred. - people whose native language is VSO Prediction: method(subject, object) preferred - people whose native language is SOV (isn't Japanese like that?) Prediction: somewhere in between the others. I suppose it won't do any good to point out that the Ada approach generalises nicely to overloaded operators, while the C++ approach requires some ad hack kluging? >E.g. I can not understand why one cannot have an anonymous access >argument which refers to a constant, e.g P(X : access CONSTANT XT). >Why not? What ever could have been said against this? Premature? What exactly does this buy you that an "in" argument doesn't buy you? It looks _awfully_ like a demand that Ada look like C++ (const ref). >So please let us keep on 'BS'ing on our favourite issues irregardless >if Robert Dewar tells us to 'shut up'. It would be more fun if Robert >and others who have been involved in the standardisation process for >Ada95 either said we excluded/included this feature because of this or >that or perhaps say we overlooked that feature. To some extent this is true, but as someone who uses GNAT every day I don't want to see too much of Robert Dewar's time diverted from enhancing an already *wonderful* tool. And his postings are already darned productive (even when he disagrees with me). -- Australian citizen since 14 August 1996. *Now* I can vote the xxxs out! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.