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: 103376,2078dddcdcd8d83
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Warning: Religious naming convention discussion :-) [was: assign
 help!!]
Date: 1997/05/14
Message-ID: <dewar.863617740@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 241566077
References: <5kjvcv$evt@news.cis.nctu.edu.tw> <EA33qK.KtA@world.std.com>
 <dewar.863495951@merv> <EA4J04.LpH@world.std.com> <5laovr$l7t@bcrkh13.bnr.ca>
 <4246A4B40B889430.86D53DD9D8EF4040.C9B35F35529B4C22@library-proxy.airnews.net>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-14T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Kevin says

<<Why?  What makes arrays more important that lists or maps? This wss one of my
pet peeves with Ada83 -- it provided very nice array support, but nothing
else.  This just encouraged mediocre Ada programmers to solve every problem
with an array, even when another structure would have been considerably faster
and easier to use.>>

I think Ada 83 made the right choice here. It provided the abstraction
mechanisms for creating lists and maps, but did not put in direct support,
and I think this decision (common for languages at this level) is exactly
right. On the other hand, arrays are fundamental, and really need to be
there as a primitive.