Re: Augusta: An open source Ada 2012 compiler (someday?)

[Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>]

On 14-03-27 21:38 , Lucretia wrote:
> On Thursday, 27 March 2014 20:02:56 UTC, Simon Clubley  wrote:
> 
>> [*] To bring this back on topic, why does something which looks like
>> Ada have to be called Ada ? Call it something else and get people
>> using Ada without realising it. :-)
> 
> I've already mentioned doing this on #Ada, a fork of Ada.
> Take the basic language, strip it down to the basics

So, what are the "basics"?

This might work, if the "basics" is really so small a language that a
compiler can be implemented (and mantained) with much, much less effort
than a real Ada compiler.

More interesting to me would be work towards making Ada compiler
implementation easier. It seems to me that progress in formal methods,
functional and declarative languages, and computer power, since the
80's, should make it possible to implement something like the SETL
version of Ada-Ed, but with acceptable performance for programs that are
not humongously large. At the same time, such work, at least if done in
an academic setting, could help to clarify the dark corners of the
language standard.

> and extend, replacing anything that's a little weird.

Weirdness is subjective and depends on one's upbringing (that is,
earlier programming languages). As a motivation for replacing something,
that does not get my support.

> i.e. 1) add exception records
> 
> type E is exception
>    record
>       My_Data : Integer;
>    end record;

I might support that for "real" Ada, too. But I believe there would have
to be restrictions on the nature of the record to avoid too complex
memory management when an exception is raised or handled.

> 2) User defined types having 'Image and 'Value, which call
> a subprogram which must be defined if these attributes are
> to be used - much like the stream operations do.

I support that. But there should be default implementations, just like
the stream operations have defaults. The defaults should be extended to
cover non-scalar types, too.

> 3) Replace tagged with just class, so:
> 
> type C is
>    class
>       ...
>    end class;

A mere sop to foreign conventions and creates useless non-uniformity
between different kinds of records. I'm against it.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
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