Re: Why is it Called a Package?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Robert A Duff wrote:
> Geoff Bull <geoff@research.canon.com.au> writes:
> 
> > Isn't it a little bit late to be arguing about this?
> [notation for ".all"]

So, your preference would be to replace ".all" by "^" and make
explicit dereferencing mandatory? 

> Only if you think Ada 95 is the final word in programming language
> design.  ;-)

No, that would be Ada 0X :-)

> Of course I don't think anybody's going to change the syntax of Ada at
> this point.  But I still find it fun to discuss language design issues,
> and if the issues involve variations on Ada, they seem on-topic enough
> to be posted here. 

I think if the syntax were to be redone I'd like the issue of "()" versus 
"[]" for array indexing to be reexamined. Then we could also think about 
some syntactic sugar for overloading "[]" as in C++. The restrictions on 
the character set that were part of the original Ada requirements don't
make a lot of sense to me now, though the restriction to ASCII is OK. 

The name "package" is just fine. Its not like there is a consensus on 
"module". SML for instance uses "struct". 

> I understand that such discussions might be boring
> to those who just want to *use* the language as it is.

I'd like to use a fixed standard language, and provide feedback so that a 
better one can be designed. I think Ada is quite good as is (my favorite 
low level language) but stealing ideas from C++, Java, Modula-3, and
others is OK as long as the spirit of Ada (static typing, readability
favored over writability, etc.) is preserved.

-- Brian