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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3ccb707f4c91a5f2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) Subject: Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation) Date: 1996/10/16 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 189910281 sender: news@organon.com (news) references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com> organization: Organon Motives, Inc. newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes: > In article , Robert Dewar 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. Precisely. The process was probably too "inbred". > 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. Absolutely. I know of several cases where this isn't just theoretical! > 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).) Agreed. /Jon -- Jon Anthony Organon Motives, Inc. Belmont, MA 02178 617.484.3383 jsa@organon.com