Re: status of Ada STL?

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

There are a lot of "Might Have Been's" out there, but at the end of the day,
Ada syntax is just not that badly broken that it needs to be fixed. If a
change could be made in Ada0x that is not disruptive of existing code and
just makes everything a little bit prettier, then O.K. But I don't think
there is anything here that is so bad that one can argue that programmers
out there will change their religion if only we tinker with the syntax. If
there were any bad "syntax traps" (such as C and some other languages have
with if statements), I'd say they should be fixed - but there just isn't
anything that bad in the language. It is what it is and we ought to be
content to basically leave it alone.

Maybe if we said:

type X is record
    --blah blah blah
end record X ;

That would create something that is mildly prettier and maybe a little more
natural feeling and it wouldn't disrupt existing code and (probably)
wouldn't badly disturb the compilers out there. But I just wouldn't want to
create any hardship over something that only makes Ada slightly prettier
than she already is. :-)

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


"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message
news:ugv46kfald9f83@corp.supernews.com...
>
> I've been programming in Ada for 21 years, and often compile programs
> that end with "end New_Type;" instead of "end record;". It seems obvious
> now, but it's also clear from the syntax that the designers thought that
> the "type Name is..." part is separate from the "record" part (type
> definition vs. type declaration), so the problem is understandable. And
> I don't know if it is worth fixing.
>
>              Randy.
>
>
>