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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.129.91.137 with SMTP id p131mr27113230ywb.0.1436540499640; Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:01:39 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.140.35.170 with SMTP id n39mr328647qgn.0.1436540499599; Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:01:39 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!peer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!e109no63875qge.1!news-out.google.com!w15ni32378qge.0!nntp.google.com!e109no63874qge.1!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:01:39 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <87y4io63jy.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=75.74.189.161; posting-account=yiWntAoAAAC1KqC_shmxJYv07B9l6LNU NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.74.189.161 References: <14592326-5070-4663-a864-5684298f3748@googlegroups.com> <004361da-53c4-4ea9-8cc6-38944aa6c7ad@googlegroups.com> <29dd5458-f9ce-4db8-9128-8ab35a9ce5f8@googlegroups.com> <64bc671c-72e5-4924-b703-3b907c69949c@googlegroups.com> <877fq9uj6g.fsf@theworld.com> <65061686-5c8f-433b-9b11-9e228298158e@googlegroups.com> <87k2u96jms.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <06f8a6f9-d219-4d40-b9ac-8518e93839bd@googlegroups.com> <87y4io63jy.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <7a29d3e9-d1bd-4f4a-b1a6-14d3e1a83a4d@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: If not Ada, what else... From: David Botton Injection-Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:01:39 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Received-Bytes: 5147 X-Received-Body-CRC: 2739200237 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:26741 Date: 2015-07-10T08:01:39-07:00 List-Id: > Well, the big win of Ada 2012 is SPARK integration, it seems to me. Adding Pre/Post, etc. is more like Eiffel integration. Not that big a deal = to be officially part of the language itself, but not unwelcome. If you manage your types well in Ada you need far less of these "extras". M= ore emphasis on Ada's real strength in typing is a smarter investment in th= e language and leaving proving tools outside the language. I certainly hope= things don't go further than they already have in this direction. >From a marketing perspective AdaCore made a mistake reversing the original= direction of SPARK to distance itself as far from Ada as possible. The Ada= name is burnt in the US and it was good marketing to create distance. They= should have just changed their name to CodeCore and marketed their multipl= e language products all focused on "correct code". > There's nothing like that for D. Actually there is and has been there for some time. Pre/Post, invariants, e= tc. and with a syntax that is far cleaner. > I looked at the Wikipedia page about D Better to look at dlang.org and if you are comfortable directly with the la= nguage specs and as per another post to look at Phobos (the runt time) whi= ch puts D way ahead in most areas. (Of course D is also truly open source n= o runtime license games) The feature of Ada (and is a big one) that places Ada ahead of D (and other= languages) is the type system of Ada that has been in place since Ada 83. = Since then Ada has suffered from feature creep issues due to reluctance to = throw away the dross and accept more incompatibilities between versions. > and didn't see much to recommend it over Ada, except garbage collection The funny thing is that I don't consider that a big deal at all. I enjoy Ad= a in particular because of the ways I get around needing to have a GC becau= se of it (interestingly enough those features like nested procedures are pa= rt of D too). > which puts it in a different class of languages. That is one of the nice things about D, that it doesn't put it in a differe= nt class of languages given the ability to avoid use of the GC if you choos= e and when you choose. BTW, Ada has always considered a D like implementation of a GC, just that o= nly 3 implementations of Ada, that I know of, ever did it. Does that put Ad= a in a different category now too? In fact D and Ada are _exactly_ in the same space, designed to be systems l= anguages and general purpose. (Actually there are a number of device driver= s written in D at least 2 OSes, etc.) Ada unlike SPARK is not a niche langu= age, just being forced in to one. My point in bringing up D, a language that is almost there, is that the ext= reme niche thinking that is towing Ada around has harmed Ada acceptance and= is creating road blocks for Ada's long term future. If D tweaked its type system a bit not sure Ada would make much sense for a= nyone other than long term old projects. > For desktop and server > applications I like lightweight concurrency, garbage collection, > functional idioms, and maybe even dynamic types, but for low level > systems code Ada is still looking good to me. I am not advocating D, nor asking the D people to consider improving their = type system, I'm advocating community efforts to improve Ada's general purp= ose use and avoid it further sinking in to extreme niche use that will make= Ada in to SPARK or another niche language of little use outside that niche= . David Botton