Re: Hungarian notation

[rogoff@sccm.Stanford.EDU (Brian Rogoff)]

ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
   >Richard O'Keefe said

   >"Can anyone explain to me why Ada doesn't have 
	   Alphard-style selectors
   >(function().all isn't quite the same thing; selectors are usefully
   >restricted)."

Could you explain what Alphard style selectors are? Thanks.

   What I would like to know is
    - here is a syntactically simple concept
    - which is also simple to implement (I'm putting it in a compiler
      for another language, which will probably never see the light of
      day for other reasons entirely)
    - which had prior art
    - which would have made referential transparency something 
      more than a slogan
   *

Great question. I'd love to know which interesting features were considered 
and rejected during the design of Ada (83 and 95). Iterators existed in CLU, 
which I think predates Ada. I often wonder why this feature, or something like 
it, isn't in Ada.

   >So Richard, the burden is on you to argue that this feature is vital, not
   >on others to argue that it is not useful.

   There is no such burden on me, because I wasn't _demanding_ the feature,
   only asking why it was left out.  I think my major question is whether
   it was accidental or deliberate.

Now that GNAT is out there, maybe we'll see some experimentation with new 
features, and interesting dialects will emerge.

-- Brian