Re: Why is Ada considered "too specialized" for scientific use

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

On 7 Kwi, 10:24, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
wrote:

> A reader would expect this procedure idempotent. Consider a program:
>
>    X; X; X; -- What does this do?

This is the same as today with regular parameterless procedures:

procedure X (Spacing : in Positive_Count := 1)
   renames Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;

Now, what the reader would expect from your example?

> >    A := Y;     -- parameterless function call on Y
>
> I would prefer the ":=" (A, Y); interpretation, here.

As I've pointed out, that would be resolved in the same way as
overloading by return type. The ":=" (A, Y) interpretation might not
match, whereas the overloaded function call on My_Other_Magic_Type
might return the type that is appropriate for assignment to A.

It's a regular overload resolution stuff.

> >    B := Y (3); -- function call on Y with one param
>
> Better it be ":="(B, "index" (Y, 3));

Except that the notion of "index" might not be appropriate. Function
is a more general term (indexing is a kind of function, but not the
other way round).

> The things you could do with your proposal could probably be achieved in
> other ways. For example, I considered a "touch" primitive operation, which
> similarly to Adjust, to be called each time you access a volatile object in
> order to get its value. This could be useful for tracing, interlocking,
> garbage collection, persistency layer purposes, etc.

Except that with the overloaded function call operator, you would not
need "touch", as the function body would be already a right place to
put all such tracing.

--
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com

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