Re: Ada -vs- GNAT

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Richard Riehle" <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3CEFCC05.16C30A69@adaworks.com...
>
> When a Standard keeps a language from meeting its full potential, is that
> a good thing.  When we insist that no construct may be used that
> is not in the standard, is that not like saying we abhor innovation.   I

This sounds like a possible argument for there being a "second tier" of
"standard" for Ada - what I've been calling "Convention" for lack of any
better term. There's nothing wrong with innovations coming from only one
source but if it becomes clear that something is generally useful, there's a
big advantage to having that feature done the same way for all
implementations that decide to support it. (The advantage is for the end
user - its a disadvantage to the vendor. :-) That's why I'd like to see
things like libraries with a reference implementation that gain some
widespread adoption - we get language extension and leverage in a
semi-standard way without having to actually tinker with the ISO standard.


>
> So, it ACT deems it useful to add something as simply as attibutes to its
> compiler to accomplish things not pre-determined by the standard, so
> be it.    This could be one of the features that differentiates their
product
>
The language allows for vendor-specific attributes and pragmas, so in a
sense, utilizing this capability is "Standard". To my way of thinking,
having GNAT support its own extensions in this way is just fine - so long as
the user is aware that this is not portable across all compilers. If you
need portability, don't use these features or at least isolate them in some
manner so its easy to change where needed. If you really want portability,
you're going to have to do a lot more work than just worrying about
compiler-specific features and you *will* have to sacrifice capabilities. So
why sweat about it and try to eliminate all non-portabilities via
standardization?


>
> Let's not be the kind of people for who innovation lasts -- and lasts --
and
> lasts.
>
I vaguely remember a quote from someone to the effect that the greatest
innovators in a field eventually become the biggest roadblock further
innovation. Human nature I guess...

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com