Re: += in ada

["Martin Dowie" <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com>]

"Russ" <18k11tm001@sneakemail.com> wrote in message
> But if I want efficient matric addition in C++ there is rarely any
> reason to use anything other than
>
>   A += B; // lots of room for a comment here, but none needed!

Well, for efficient matrix operations with in-fix notation, check out
AI-296 and AI-318 , which should sort this out for most cases.

http://www.ada-auth.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/AIs/AI-00296.TXT
http://www.ada-auth.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/AIs/AI-00318.TXT


> Every little thing that can help improve Ada's popularity without
> damaging its effectiveness is critical now. If the Ada 200x design
> team gets too conservative, Ada will almost certainly work its way out
> of the picture.

Well, for 200Y some serious 'C++/Java'-style improvements are on the
cards (though not yet approved), e.g.

'interfaces' a la Java, and
Object.Method notation like C++/Java/etc.

So, the ARG _have_ been listening and 'borrrowing' ideas from other
languages. These 2 proposals have _really_ big advantages but even
then there is a long and hard discussion about how to define them
consistently within Ada.

I'm reminded of a quote from Bertrand Meyer
  "Eiffel borrows quite heavily from some earlier programming
   languages and I am sure that if we had found a good programming
   construct in C we would have used it as well.".


There just isn't enough time to get everyones favourite 'hobby horse' in
the new standard - you could always push for this in Ada1Z! :-)


> Take a look some time at comp.lang.c, comp.lang.c++, comp.lang.java.*,
> comp.lang.perl, and comp.lang.python. You might just find that each of
> them gets more posts in a day than comp.lang.ada gets in a month. Is
> that *because* they each have "+="? I don't know, but you cannot deny
> the correlation between "+=" and popularity. (Of course, they all use
> "=" rather than ":=" for assignment, which may also be a huge factor,
> but that's another story.)

I've stopped lurking in comp.lang.c++ as the quality of the posts was,
soooo amazing poor. And I think it says a lot about the language that
there are _so_many_ questions, and repeated questions from beginners.


> > don't care. I'd just suggest dropping the lobbying for it because it
> > isn't going to happen.
>
> I've already wasted more than enough time on this little endeavor, so
> I may just take your suggestion.

I think you're way too late to influence Ada0Y but come back with
an AI after Ada05 (or what ever) is approved and when the ARG
are starting to look at the next revision...

...but be prepared! Have a look through the AI's (and AC's) that
have been raised for this standardization and check on the level of
debate that is required to persuade anyone of this merits of any
particular case.

Here's the link for the AI:
http://www.ada-auth.org/AI-SUMMARY.HTML

And for all discussions:
http://www.ada-auth.org/ais.html