Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation)

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <dewar.845340573@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Not incomprehensible at all, it just means the world does not agree with
>you, or at least the world of people involved and interested in the Ada
>95 design. When I argue for something, and everyone else disagrees, I
>don't go around mumbling "sad and incomprehensible", I just figure I
>was wrong!
>
>In this particular case, the feeling was that including GC in the IS
>annex would make the annex too difficult to implement, which, since
>it is optional, might be counter  productive.

It is true that few people pushed for GC during the Ada 9X process.  But
one should remember that the people involved were primarily existing Ada
83 users.  Somebody who thinks GC is extremely important would have
become an Eiffel, Lisp, Smalltalk, or whatever programmer long before
the Ada 9X project started.

Therefore, although existing Ada users may be perfectly happy without
GC, it might well be the case that non-Ada users would be attracted to
Ada if it had GC.  All is not lost -- it may well happen that Ada will
have GC in a few years.  (Several have pointed out that "having GC" is
an implementation issue.  Correct, but I think one can reasonably define
"language X has GC" to mean "I am confident that all implementations of
language X now and in the future will have GC".  In that sense, Lisp has
GC, but Ada does not (yet).)

- Bob