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,f51e93dacd9c7fca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-18 16:36:32 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.mathworks.com!dfw-peer!news.verio.net!iad-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!bpr.best.vwh.net!bpr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: status of Ada STL? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <3d0ce154_5@news.bluewin.ch> <3D0D4274.6C5E02F9@acm.org> <4519e058.0206170753.599fd771@posting.google.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 23:36:27 +0000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.220.65.223 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: iad-read.news.verio.net 1024443153 192.220.65.223 (Tue, 18 Jun 2002 23:32:33 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 23:32:33 GMT Organization: Verio Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26321 Date: 2002-06-18T23:36:27+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Robert A Duff wrote: > Brian Rogoff writes: > >... but I think that Cyclone is > > worthy of study, since it has some features contemplated for the next > > generation of Ada (region based memory management, at least if I > > understood Tucker Taft correctly) and also some features that would be > > great to see in a new language derived from Ada (pattern matching). > > I was not impressed by Cyclone's region-based memory management. At > least for the kinds of programs I write, it seemed that most of the data > would have to end up in the most-global (garbage collected) heap anyway. > Regions are not first-class citizens in Cyclone (they can't be allocated > dynamically, as in "new Region..."). But that restriction is key to > Cyclone's ability to prove stuff about them (no dangling pointers). That's right, Cyclone's implementors are from the ML community, so being able to prove stuff, as you say, is a high priority. > Tucker hates garbage collection, and longs for an efficient and safe > alternative to both by-hand memory management and GC. I don't know why anyone would hate garbage collection. That seems like a rather odd sentiment. It also seems that if this is true he'll never be satisfied, since GC is just the extreme on the automatic end for memory management; all non-GC mem managers are "by hand" at some level. In total half baked mode, my gut tells me that future type systems will include a lot more usage information and compilers will be able to deduce all sorts of nice things about your program so that even if there is no "garbage collector" there will be little or no memory management explicit in the code when you don't need to do it. But this is nothing like what Ada or C++ or other low level bitdiddling languages are about, you'll need to look at Clean's uniqueness typings or the effect systems research (by the same guys who did the original region inference stuff I think). > Me too, but Cyclone ain't it, IMHO. Well, it ain't derived from Ada! Anyways, pattern matching, like all modern functional languages have, would be a worthy addition to an Ada like language. > As you say, it's worthy of study; Tucker has mentioned some ideas for > making it more powerful. I must have missed this. Did the discussion happen here, or elsewhere? > > http://www.research.att.com/projects/cyclone/ > > > > yes, it would have been nicer if they'd started with Ada as a base, but > > they're going for widespread applicability so C compatibility is an > > important goal. > > C compatibility isn't the only thing. There's also the fact that lots > of people are used to C-like syntax. Java isn't even close to > compatible with C, but C programmers can feel comfortable with it, > because it sort of looks like C -- I have no proof, but I suspect that's > a big part of the reason Java caught on. I disagree, and I think that there are lots of other reasons that Java became popular, though I think that it's syntactic similarity to C helped, I really doubt that was a large part of it. Why did Perl and Python (and now Ruby?) achieve some popularity? My belief is that there is no great theory of why languages become popular, and reasons that work in one time and place won't work at others. It's just luck, or fashion. -- Brian