Re: No multiple dispatch in Ada95?

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Just so I am not misunderstood, when I "complained" about the complexit
of CLOS, I was specifically referring to the Meta-object protocol, which
is quite a challenge even for those with a taste for complex things!

It is quite true that a simple level of multiple dispatching could have
been implemented. We actually looked into this in considerable detail
in the Griffin project at NYU, but our final conclusions were very close
to those posted by Tuck in reference to adding MD to Ada.

I think this is one place where Tuck probably made the cut correctly. After
all it is interesting that Tuck (not known for his fear in the face of
complexity :-) never seriously suggested adding this feature, because he
felt from the start that it did not fit well without major conceptual and
language changes.

Oh-oh, I just realized that the last para could be read to mean I imply that
Tuck didn't make the right cut anywhere else. I certainly didn't mean that.
There are perhaps just 1 or 2 places where I would have liked the cut a 
little differently (I still miss in out parameters on functions), but only
1 or 2 :-)