Re: Ada OO Mechanism

["Shawn M. Root" <smroot@orbitworld.net>]

Richard D Riehle wrote in message
<7i28qu$1bc@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>...
:In article <dale-2105990836310001@r1021c-18.ppp.cs.rmit.edu.au>,
: dale@cs.rmit.edu.au (Dale Stanbrough) wrote:
:
:>" I would like to ask a question, however.  In a recent thread
:>  entitled "A question for my personal knowledge" some people were
saying
:>  that the Ada OO mechanism was counterintuitive.  I tend to agree.
This
:>  concern was dismissed by others as being merely "syntactic sugar",
and
:>  claims were made that the Ada mechanism is actually easier to use
than
:>  the C++ style."
:>
:>I actually like the method.operation notation, but I don't find the
lack
:>of it in Ada a really big problem. It _is_ syntactic sugar, in as
much as
:>there are no semantic differences that can be attributed to it.
:
:I know some languages in which the verb is the last word of a
sentence.
:Some other languages are subject-verb-object, others have entirely
:different syntax.  So when I hear someone say that Ada is
:counterintuitive or C++ is counterintuitive or Object COBOL is
:counterintuitive, I understand that they mean, "This is not the way
:I am used to thinking about things."   That does not mean it is
:counterintuitive.  It simply means they have had difficulty learning
:a new programming language just as they might have trouble learning a
:new spoken language.  When I hear someone speak of "natural" language,
:I have to wonder what they are talking about.
:
Actually it does mean that it is counterintuitive.  Counterintuitive
means that what you found is not what you expected to find.  This is a
relative term, not an absolute.  What is counterintuitive for me, may
be readily obvious to you.  Intuition has nothing to do with "thinking
about things". It has to do with the understanding or knowing of
something _without_ overt reasoning.  Furthermore, it does not mean
that someone had difficulty learning a new programming language.  It
simply means that, in my particular case, the Ada OO mechanisms seem
less obvious than the C++ mechanisms.

:There is absolutely nothing wrong with the syntax of C++.  Nothing
:wrong or counterintuitive about the syntax of Ada or Eiffel. And
:there is nothing counterintuitive about the object model of the
:emerging COBOL standard.  If you want to say, "I am having trouble
:learning this language because it is not what I am used to," fine.
:That is accepting responsibility for your own difficulty.  Lots of
:great ideas throughout history have been counterintuitive. The
:Greeks could not conceive of a symbol for zero. Aristotle thought
:it was intutitive to begin counting from two because there was no
:point in counting if there only a single instance.  Before the
:invention of calculus, the notion of a limit was counterintuitive.
:

Yes, but after calculus was invented, and the concept of the limit was
understood, would you invent a new way to do limits if the new way
offered no significant advantages over the old way?

:The statement, "I find such and such to be counterintuitive," is a
:tired old excuse for failing to work hard enough to understand some
:idea.  It does not apply to languages;  especially not to programming
:languages.
:

Again, I don't know where you got this impression.  Perhaps others
you've spoken to have used the "counterintuitive excuse" to cover
difficulties in learning.  However, that is not the case here.  I was
introduced to Ada before C++ so, if anything, I had more trouble
learning the C++ way of doing things.  My comments have nothing to do
with not working hard enough to understand certain ideas.  I understand
the ideas and concepts involved.  I understand the other side's
arguments.  So far, however, I don't agree with them.

--
Shawn M. Root