Re: Is Ada likely to survive ?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shellx.best.com>]

On 5 Aug 1997, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> William Clodius <wclodius@lanl.gov> writes:
> >Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> >> <snip>  There is far more creative energy going into developing
> >> the logic programming paradigm than there is going into extending Ada, for
> >> example.
> >> <snip>
> 
> >This strikes me as a misleading analogy.
> <snip>
> The ruddy thing is a flipping CONTRAST.
> Let's face it, before Prolog there _was_ no "logic programming paradigm".

Irrelevant, and arguably false. Even if one accepts that that paradigm
began with Prolog that doesn't mean one should have to identify Prolog with
the logic programming paradigm. 

> The major misreading, however, was in thinking that I intended
> "developing the paradigm" to be understood as an unmixed good.

I certainly understood. My own point was that some development of Ada 
could be a good thing, and I currently see very little.  

> I don't *want* people "developing the Ada paradigm" (and there
> _is_ an Ada paradigm distinct from the "imperative" paradigm in
 
I disagree with this. If there is an "Ada paradigm", distinct from 
CLU, Modula-X, Oberon, Theta, etc., then it becomes *meaningless* to 
talk about "paradigms" distinct from programming languages. Perhaps 
if you said what you believe the "Ada paradigm" is, I would change 
my mind. 

> general) in a hundred different directions.  All this development
> of the paradigm is great for filling the shelves with PhDs, but
> lousy for people who actually want to *use* the wretched thing.

Some development is great for users. Anna and Larch like tools, for 
example, which require no changes to the base language, would be quite  
useful. I believe that you are interpeting "extensions" as being 
"incompatible language changes" which is not entirely what I had in 
mind. 

-- Brian