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: 103376,7f4d16c4ee371eb5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: Why is it Called a Package? Date: 2000/04/06 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 607702218 References: <38DF7F38.8D656ABD@lmtas.lmco.com> <38DFB0BC.9FF72EFC@callnetuk.com> <87u2hq857e.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <38E2A4A4.E59E997C@research.canon.com.au> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 955052701 199 bpr@206.184.139.136 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-04-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Robert A Duff wrote: > Geoff Bull 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