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=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,2a34b7ad6c6a0774 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "(see below)" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Efficiency of code generated by Ada compilers Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 02:58:11 +0100 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net y0JpXM/3rZ69Wqf7srk55AQprL7OVudn/mGVGOKjVPciJPT1eO Cancel-Lock: sha1:HT7VFDvBZUg++y0THqDwtRAxYXE= User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.23.0.091001 Thread-Topic: Efficiency of code generated by Ada compilers Thread-Index: Acs8HVBa3GJtaIzr0kOF/khDeZ45LA== Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:13316 Date: 2010-08-15T02:58:11+01:00 List-Id: On 15/08/2010 01:58, in article irce665hsdkil92saql82nl41cc3vpbq1j@4ax.com, "Brian Drummond" wrote: > On Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:51:15 +0100, "(see below)" > wrote: > >> On 14/08/2010 11:47, in article jvqc66t42m4ek5rkpj59ctu3r75fb4hln2@4ax.com, >> "Brian Drummond" wrote: >> >>> I was involved with the Linn Rekursiv processor (which I'm sure at least two >>> other group regulars remember) >> >> Indeed. Though David Harland's ideas on programming language design were >> about as far removed from the Ada philosophy as it is possible to get. > > I'm not so sure on *design* - the goals were largely to achieve expressive > power, to give the programmer the best abstractions; the best means of > expressing the task, instead of working around the limitations of the > language. Yes, but I fear he was over-optimistic about the ability of most programmers to design coherent and effective language extensions/features (as opposed to application-oriented abstractions) for themselves. We had many an argument about that. I think the history of programming languages supports my pessimism. Ada stands out, head and shoulders above the other 700K programming languages. >>> There was much talk then of "bridging the semantic gap" between high level >>> languages and the low level operations in hardware. It seems we have >>> subsequently bridged the semantic gap, by leaning to program in C... > (ack! should have read: learning to program in C) "leaning" works too, 8-) -- Bill Findlay chez blueyonder.co.uk