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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Not intended for use in medical,
Date: 1997/05/11
Message-ID: <dewar.863365166@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 240886615
References: <3.0.32.19970423164855.00746db8@mail.4dcomm.com>
 <5kmek2$9re@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> 	<E9rMuy.Hs0@world.std.com>
 <dewar.863062734@merv> 	<E9vH6G.88E@world.std.com>
 <EACHUS.97May9175402@spectre.mitre.org>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-11T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Robert Eachus says

<<Which is why it didn't get added to Ada 95, in spite of Robert
  Dewar's arguments in favor.  The few cases where you do want functions
  with side-effects (random number generators being the prime example)
  can be written in Ada with a bit of extra work in the private part.>>

It = allowing in out parameters in functions. The trouble is that Robert
Eachus' claim is false. It is impossible to write the body of the
random number generator specified in the Ada 95 RM efficiently in
legitimate Ada 95 (the GNAT version has to use special GNAT specific
attributes to get a decent implementation, though you could probably
do the same with unchecked conversion in almost any implementation).

 <<No, it is cultural, but the language syntax does seem to have a very
  strong influence on the culture.  One reason I believe that Algol 68
  never succeeded was that the cultural imperitives implicit in the
  notation were in conflict.  I once thought that translating the
  reserved* words into German, Dutch, or Czeck would have made people
  much more comfortable with it.>>

I never saw anyone be uncomfortable with Algol-68 who used it. On the
contrary in the few situations where it was available, it was widely
used and liked (CDC 6000 series machines, and notably the Algol-68R
implementation on ICL machines -- the latter implementation was widely
used for both teaching and real projects, and in the British Journal
of COmputing Survey in the early 70's, Algol-68 was named the ideal
teaching language by over 90% of English universities (all of which
had ICL machines due to government procurement pressures)).

Many people posit all sorts of interesting theories about why Algol-68
"failed", but the simple fact of the matter is that Algol-68 succeeded
where good compilers were available, and failed where they were not!

<<*Yes, in the standard they are not techically reserved, but did
  anyone have an implementation where they weren't?>>

That is technically confused. Algol-68 has two type styles for identifiers,
represented as bold and normal in publication language, and signalled by
some "stropping" convention in real compilers. Two typical stropping
mechanisms are the use of upper case, and the use of quote marks, as in
traditional Algol-60 compilers.

Keywords and mode names (type names to the Ada folks) are in bold, and
ordinary identifires are in normal font. The keywords ARE reserved as
bold names, e.g. IF (or 'if') cannot be used as a mode name in Algol-68,
but of course the identifier if in normal case can of course be used.