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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the .... Date: 1996/02/17 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 139876540 references: <00001a73+00002504@msn.com> <4etcmm$lpd@nova.dimensional.com> <3114d8fb.5a455349@zesi.ruhr.de> <4f5h5t$f13@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <4g1bgf$l5@mailhub.scitec.com.au> <3124B43F.19E0@escmail.orl.mmc.com> <4g2r2r$ded@stc06.ctd.ornl.gov> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1996-02-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: A general point on complexity vs simplicity. During the Ada 95 design, we were constantly arguing along this spectrum. About half way through I realized that a lot of the trouble was that complex means a lot of different things, and we stopped to categorize them: complex to learn complex to use complex to implement complex to formally define complex to understand rigorously these are potentially different. For example, the exceptions facility may be complex in several, perhaps all, the above rrespects, but one more entry: complex to understand programs using the facility may result in regarding exceptions as a simplifying factor, since if exceptions are really needed, it is simpler to understand a program in Ada that uses exceptions rather than in another language where the facility must be painfully faked. Or take any of the many features that are easy to understand and define, but hard to implement (dynamic own variables in Algol-60 are a nice example -- variable length fields in a record are a nice example in Ada). So when people talk about complexity, it is quite helpful if they narrow down a bit what they mean.