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: 103376,b47b15fda2aeb0b2
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Two ideas for the next Ada Standard
Date: 1996/09/04
Message-ID: <dewar.841839901@schonberg>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 178429533
references: <50aao3$3r88@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <dewar.841590835@schonberg>
 <322B5BB0.422E@joy.ericsson.se>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-09-04T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Jonas said:

Coming from a C/C++ background

  It's always tricky to adjust to a second language. That's one of the
  reasons that programmers should know many languages well, so that they
  have a perspective on possible ways of doing things. People who speak
  English only have a hard time with German (for example) at first, but
  once you speak many natural languages, learning more becomes easier.

I have had a hard time to adjust to
many of the Ada features (geez, I have never casted so much before in
my programming life).

  If you are writing a lot of type conversions (I guess that is what you
  mean by using the Algol-68 term cast), then probably you are making
  a common beginner's mistake of using derived types *too* heavily.
  Yes, it is a strong point of Ada that you can use derived types
  to separate different kinds of types, but is a weak point of many
  Ada programs that they overuse this feature and use derived types
  where subtypes would be more appropriate.

  If you are talking about other kinds of conversions, let's see some
  examples.

I still prefer the X.P notation and believe it could have been
integrated into Ada95 in a reasonably clean manner - oh yes, I have
read the Rationale on this and it sounds hollow and thin to me.

  OK, probably you still have not fully understood the point here. This
  point has been *extensively* debated on comp.lang.ada (there is plenty
  of BS'ing of the kind you want to see more of here). I suggest you
  consult an archive of CLA and read this discussion. You may still
  disagree, but if you think the argument on the other side is hollow,
  you don't fully understand it.

PS Perhaps Robert's postings would be more productive if
they actually told us how DS

  Hmmm! I am completely unable to interprete this mysterious suggestion :-)