Re: Ada Popularity: Comparison of Ada/Charles with C++ STL (and Perl)

[kevin.cline@gmail.com (Kevin Cline)]

Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> wrote in message news:<3673998.bj16mkkOu2@linux1.krischik.com>...
> Matthew Heaney wrote:
> 
> > If AI-302 doesn't meet your needs, then you need to let us know.
> > Please peruse the a-c*.ad[sb] sources at the tigris website.��(Note
> > that I'm still incorporating changes from the most recent ARG
> > meeting.)
> 
> I have got my most important baby (indefinite types). And I don't want to
> confuse the ARG. I fully agree that we need a container library inside the
> standart.
> 
> However it would be sad if Ada.Containers would kill off all other container
> libraries. Just like the STL did. 

I think the STL killed off all the other container libraries because
the STL container/algorithm separation is an extremely powerful design
that dominates all older container library designs.  Certainly STL
programming is much cleaner and easeir than programming with the once
popular RogueWave containers.  The STL also has the advantage that it
is relatively easy to write new containers that will work with the STL
algorithms, so that even though new containers are written, they all
look like STL containers.
 
> Im am sill looking at IBM OCL thinking
> how much more practical it was. std::string might me academicly correct but
> IString was a lot more usefull in day to day live with all the asInt (),
> asUnsigned (), asAnythingYouEverNeed() methods.

The problem with that design is that it isn't readily extensible to
accomodate user-defined types, and it makes generic programming very
difficult.