Re: language design lessons learned from Ada

[evans@evans.pgh.pa.us (Arthur Evans Jr)]

I asked

> Where might anyone have recorded in a
> scholarly fashion issues about language design that were learned in the
> design of Ada, either Ada-83 or Ada-95?  These would be results of
> interest to one involved in design of programming languages.

and hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) wrote:

> It isn't in the best possible form, but the suggestions that led up to
> Ada95 are all available, at least in paper form.  Perhaps someone should
> put them out on a CDROM, or at least on a web site somewhere.

As a member of the team that wrote the Ada-9X Requirements Document, I'm
familiar with that corpus.  The data all existed in electronic form at
SEI at one time; I expect they still do.  However, that's not what I'm
looking for.

Perhaps I didn't adequately explain my desires.  What I want is thoughts
of those who were involved in the design process, now that it's over and
there's been time to think about how it all came out.  What is good
about the design, and what could have been done better?  What have we
learned that other language designers should be aware of?

> Most of the lessons learned in Ada83 were quickly applied to other languages
> of the era -- Modula-N, Eiffel, etc.  Even Microsoft's current 'Basic' shows
> some evidence of having been exposed to Ada83.

Well, yes.  I'm looking for more explicit comments, though.

Art Evans