Re: Q: access to subprogram

[jsa@organon.com (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <dewar.836963120@schonberg> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> Jon says
> 
> "While the lack of direct support for recursive types across package
> boundaries and lack of assertions are more important (IMO) goofs, and
> while the evinced reasons for the latter one are mind numbingly
> incomprehensible, this latest example would appear to take the crown
> for the most stupefying goof."
> 
> Well it is always easy for users to decide that they want everything
> and don't want to worry about the required resources, but a language
> design can't be quite that cavalier in balancing requirements.

We had a couple private exchanges on this point.  But just to be
clear: I did not mean that I thought the leaving of "partial closures"
out _itself_ was "stupefying", rather the purported _reasons_ for
doing so are.

The reasons for leaving out recursive types across packages definitely
make sense, but are just not convincing (pretty much everyone agrees
now on this).  The ones for leaving out assertions that I've seen here
(certain people getting wigged out over possible optimization effects)
basically make no sense.

Also, I am far from the camp that wants everything.  Personally I'd
flush various chunks of what eventually got accepted because they fuzz
up the focus of the language and require a fair amount of resources to
get right.  A lot of effort spent on stuff that is on the fringes of
where the language will be applied (and thus not see much actual use).
The saving grace is that the user's model of Ada is orthogonal enough
that they can pretty much be completely ignored.

And at the end of the day, it's still, without doubt, the best of the
viable options.


/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
1 Williston Road, Suite 4
Belmont, MA 02178

617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com