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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,79bbf7e359159d0d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-11 10:34:06 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!news.maxwell.syr.edu!jfk3-feed1.news.digex.net!atl1-feed1.news.digex.net!intermedia!cyclone2.usenetserver.com!news-out.usenetserver.com!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!sea-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: newbie can't get exceptions to work! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <25%y6.2364$jz.201607@www.newsranger.com> <3ACDB29E.45B91316@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 17:33:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.184.139.136 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: sea-read.news.verio.net 987010397 206.184.139.136 (Wed, 11 Apr 2001 17:33:17 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 17:33:17 GMT Organization: Verio Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6774 Date: 2001-04-11T17:33:17+00:00 List-Id: On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Robert A Duff wrote: > Brian Rogoff writes: > > > I agree, but since you proposed going C like, let's go for shorter names, > > like proc. And no "returns" either, let's regress to a Pascalish :. > > Well, I didn't really "propose" going C like. I was merely griping that > one might be *forced* to go C like in order to gain popularity. Yes you're right. I realize you weren't completely serious, but I think that point (about syntax) has been made many times, and even though I generally like Ada syntax much better I thought I'd argue the C side. > I realize it's an exageration. And of course, as you point out, one might > be able to borrow some *good* ideas from C, too. Truthfully, I don't know that there is that much good to borrow from C. Pascal and the other Wirth languages already used [] for arrays. Ada got the ability to get a pointer to a local variable, and did it better than C IMO. As Lauernt Guerby rightly observed, {} versus begin-end is mostly a non-issue. A huge number of programmers used to C derived syntaxes are used to that choice, and find it readable. By adding a semi-colon after the closing brace we can get back the nice feature of Ada which matches opening names (and I admit this is a very nice feature, which I emulate in C/C++/Java/OCaml/... with comments :-( ). So, I think it's possible to get much closer to C without losing fundamentally good Ada features. As far as [] goes, sure, my degrees are in mathematics, I'm very well aware that you can view an array as a (partial) function, but as a programmer, I just don't see things that way. If I want a very formal mathematical language I wouldn't use Ada at all, I'd use Haskell or Clean. > > OK. I think C folks will whine though. I have a generic package for these > > in Ada, and I use Incr and Decr. > > But you unfortunately have to clutter the code with instantiations, > which negates the benfit, IMHO. Absolutely right. So one good idea we could steal from (gasp! shudder!) C++ is automatic instantiation of generics. There was a paper on this in Tri-Ada 91, and one of the authors (Shen) has a PhD thesis exploring this idea in more detail. > > Anyways, Python, Tcl, Ruby and others didn't have large marketing budgets. > > Granted. The question then, if you want to go the cheapo route, is to find a group of programmers whose needs aren't being well met by the available choices. I always think of Ada as a low level language (despite the weird VHLL description) used for embedded, real-time, and systems programming work. Is there a need for another language there? -- Brian