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From: "Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: [Spark] Arrays of Strings
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 02:20:15 -0400
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"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:1049986095.779228@master.nyc.kbcfp.com...
> Getting rid of features that are presumed to cause problems is a bit of
> hubris that language designers always seem to fall victim to. Ada itself
> had a huge problem because the designers thought that function pointers
> could be eliminated. Spark gets rid of all pointers, Java gets rid of
> templates, and so on and so on.

You are missing the point of Spark which is to provide a (super)subset of
Ada in which formal proofs about the implementation are possible.  Lack of
pointers was not a case of hubris but a deliberate and sound decision in
Spark's case.  Formal validation and verification methodologies require
unambiguous specifications and implementations.  Spark is intended to
satisfy such formal needs.

> Then everyone who uses these languages has to figure out how to work
> around the lack of the feature they need, essentially duplicating it in
> some kludgy way. Meanwhile the language designers have their heads in the
> sand and their noses in the air while they pat themselves on the back (:-)
> in self-congratulation on how they have created perfection.

Of one should know something about a language before one chooses to
overgeneralize ;)