Re: proposal for new assignment operators

[18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ)]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote in message news:<3EFC86A0.5090002@cogeco.ca>...

> You know, I can be open minded about many things, but there are
> just some things in life that are not worth the bother for. To

I will agree that augmented assignment operators are a small thing,
but sometimes small things add up to make a significant difference.

Take car design as one of an infinite number of possible examples.
Suppose the speedometer is located in such a way that you have to bend
your neck awkwardly to see it while driving. Now, someone could come
along and say that's a trivial problem -- but if you drive the car for
10 years it becomes a real nuisance.

Ada has many nice features. I really appreciate the ability to pass
arguments by named association, for example (Python has this too, by
the way). It has overloading and default arguments, which are
certainly *unnecessary* but are nice features nevertheless. But Ada
doesn't have augmented assignment, which the top five languages have.
It's like a luxury car that has everything but frickin' cup holders
and visors.

> me at least, this is one of them. Many reasons have been given
> already why this is a worthless proposition. There is not a _big_

Worthless, eh? I guess that's why C, C++, Java, Perl, and Python all
have it, and it is one of the most common features used. The users of
those languages probably outnumber Ada users by over 100:1, by the
way. No, that doesn't mean that Ada is inferior, of course, but it
does mean that many other programmers consider augmented assignment to
worth something. Just who the hell are you to declare it "worthless"?

> payback here. That perhaps is one of the biggest reasons it will
> not be seriously considered.  It also goes against some of the
> standing goals of Ada (readability, for example). But all of this
> has been said before.

Ah, the readability thing again. I guess you think that a statement
must be true if you repeat it enough times. Sorry, but it ain't so.

> So I voiced my opinion, and I am going to leave it at that. You
> guys can argue this out, but I personally think this is wasting
> your time.

Actually, I agree that much of this discussion has been a waste of
time. Let's just make Ada a fully modern programming language and
forget about it.

> (signing off this thread).

Yeah, right.