From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-28 01:48:28 PST Path: news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? Date: 28 Sep 2003 01:48:25 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <3F7024F8.1000102@crs4.it> <3F71A78A.5000701@crs4.it> NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.194.87.148 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1064738907 21308 127.0.0.1 (28 Sep 2003 08:48:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Sep 2003 08:48:27 GMT Xref: news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:64 Date: 2003-09-28T08:48:27+00:00 List-Id: "Randy Brukardt" wrote in message news:... > "Russ" <18k11tm001@sneakemail.com> wrote in message > news:bebbba07.0309251541.63ef4f7d@posting.google.com... > > As you might have anticipated, however, I don't agree with you about > > the "other consequences of trying to define and implement "+=" in > > Ada". As far as I am concerned, the "other consequences" are > > potentially improved efficiency for vector/matrix arithmetic and other > > applications, but as you know I've already beaten that one to death. I > > think it will take a friggin' nuclear device to get anyone here to > > budge on that one. > > More than a nuclear device, for the simple reason that there are a limited > number of changes to the standard that can be made. The effort to write and > edit the standard, the effort to update implementations and tools, the > effort to create new books and training are all limited. (This isn't the > early 80's when Ada had a virtually unlimited budget.) > There are some changes contemplated (particularly the prefix call notation) > which are very much in the category of "making Ada seem more familar to > outsiders". And many others aimed at making Ada more consistent. But clearly > there can only be a very limited number of such things. Can you honestly say > that :=+ is more important than prefix calls or "not null" modifiers or > anonymous access-to-constant types? Fair enough, but let me just try one more angle on this. I think proposed new features should be evaluated in terms of cost/benefit. The augmented assignment operators may not provide a huge benefit, but their "cost" is virtually zero. Another Ada expert on this forum called them "syntactic sugar" for procedure calls. That being the case, they should be almost trivial to implement. For Pete's sake, they are simply standard notation for very common standard procedures! Explaining them to new Ada programmers should be trivial too. I suspect most of them will be surprised to find out that Ada was so primitive at one time as to not have such operators. Also, if I may, I would suggest that this is not the time to be overly conservative about new features in Ada. Risky ones yes, perhaps, but not "syntactic sugar." Perhaps Ada *needs* some "syntactic sugar" about now. Check back to the very first post in this thread, and you will see that it's getting late in the game for Ada. How late? I'd say we trail by 13 points with about 4 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, and we have the ball on the opposing team's 40 yard line with fourth down and 3 yards to go. If ever there was a time to take a chance, it's now. If you play it safe and punt now, you are conceding the game.