Re: A Pascal Subset of Ada (was: Why Ada is Failing Socially)

[neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher)]

In article <3395@sparko.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
>In article <1133.2868ee55@vger.nsu.edu> g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes:
>>
>>You might have wanted to name it   "Ada--"
>>
>
>Ada-- has existed for years. It's called Modula-2. And just what Wirth left
>out is all the good stuff that makes Ada such a pleasure by comparison
>(see my previous post re: M2).

[Another post bearing little relevance to Ada -- sorry:]

In all fairness, you might mention that:

- There exist very fast compilers for Modula-2 running in 128K of RAM on a 12
  year old workstation. I doubt it would be a "pleasure" to use Ada on a Lilith.
  While the above concern is clearly academic, it is my impression that for
  todays PCs, compilation speed and memory consumption of Ada compilers are
  still just barely acceptable (At least one Ada compiler for the Macintosh is
  just a very slow C preprocessor).

- One think that makes Modula-2 a pleasure to work with, in comparison with
  Ada, are procedure variables. (I know, I know. I just couldn't resist :-)

- Although this is impossible to qualify, I find that Modula-2 has an
  aesthetically very pleasing overall syntax, while some Ada syntax details don't
  look as nice (With all due respect to the Principle of Uniform Referents or
  whatever it is called, I don't like a.all := b.all).

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
   "These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can 
    even aspire to crudeness." -- William Gibson, _Johnny Mnemonic_