Re: was Re: Ada / C++ comparison paper anymore

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net>]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Mark Lundquist wrote:
> "Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
> news:Pine.BSF.4.40.0112181924260.32168-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
>
> > I have made the point many
> > times that I think some amount of inference/automatic instantiation, like
> > what C++ has, would be a great thing in an Ada like language.
>
> Yes.

It's good to know that at least *one* more Ada fan likes this capability.

If I put my C++ hat on, what I'd really like over there (also highly
unlikely :-() would be a resyntaxing so that it looked something like
SPECS (?), Damien Conway's "C++ Resyntaxed" proposal. And, of course,
more nesting. In the same way that I think its unfortunate that some
people can't look past Ada syntax flaws, I think its equally sad that
people can't look past C++ syntax flaws to see some of the interesting
(I don't mean that in a pejorative sense here) features of that language.

I don't think either language is my ideal low level language, but each has
aspects worthy of taking. Note that I also consider both to be low level
languages.

> > I'd also be
> > happy with a bit more shorthand, like +:=
>
> As long as it doesn't return a value :-)

Of course!

> I might prefer a more longhand shorthand :-), e.g.
>
>     X'Increment;                        -- (X names object of integer type)
>     X'Increase (By => 1.23);     -- (X names object of any numeric type,
> here a FP type)
>     etc...

Well, you can do something pretty close now with a generic package and the
function call notation. Given that, I'd prefer operators.

I find it easier to read code with some shorthand. I think Ada goes a bit
too far in not having enough, and C++ goes a bit too far in having some
bad syntax and overloaded names. It's easier to forgive C++ here, since it
is supposed to be as compatible with C as possible. I guess the real
mistake in Ada was the requirement about the restricted character set.

Stroustrup made some comment, I forget where, that he wished he could have
started with Algol-68 as a base instead of C, but that obviously that
would have gone nowhere. Sigh. Now that would have been an amazing
language.

-- Brian