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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.236.175.66 with SMTP id y42mr7908465yhl.38.1396636273911; Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:31:13 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.50.176.227 with SMTP id cl3mr128541igc.11.1396636273806; Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:31:13 -0700 (PDT) Path: backlog4.nntp.dca3.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!w5no619237qac.0!news-out.google.com!gi6ni200igc.0!nntp.google.com!l13no2965879iga.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 11:31:13 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <7f1c01c5-3563-4b94-9831-152dbbf2ecdc@googlegroups.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=96.226.230.210; posting-account=zwxLlwoAAAChLBU7oraRzNDnqQYkYbpo NNTP-Posting-Host: 96.226.230.210 References: <7f1c01c5-3563-4b94-9831-152dbbf2ecdc@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Your wish list for Ada 202X From: "Dan'l Miller" Injection-Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 18:31:13 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:185516 Date: 2014-04-04T11:31:13-07:00 List-Id: On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 4:41:16 PM UTC-5, Stoik wrote: > I think that even a casual user of Ada should be able to influence someho= w the new version of Ada. I wonder what is high on your list of wishes for = Ada 202X? High on my list of wishes for Ada 202X is for there to be a clear cattle-pr= od that is an over-arching guiding principle, instead of Ada 202X being mer= ely a catch-all bag of rather-random miscellany. Green, Red, etc color languages & Ada 1983's de facto over-arching guiding = principle: explore what ***programming-in-the-large*** needs to replace the plethora o= f DoD/NATO languages utilized in vehicular & munitions systems. (Ada & C++= as Ada's dissenting counter-culture successfully taught the world to think= bigger, more-disciplined thoughts and aspire to more-sophisticated designs= that they would naturally have accomplished in mere Pascal or mere C.) Ada 1995's de facto over-arching guiding principle: import into Green Ada 1983 some of the features ***of Red and of C++***, es= pecially OO. If C++ utilized "Ada 1983 does right" as its mantra, then Ada= 1995 effectively utilized "C++ done right" as its counter-mantra as rebutt= al or rebuke of C++. Ada 2005's de facto over-arching guiding principle: ***course-correction*** of Ada 1995 where the OO community criticized. Alt= hough laudable in producing a splendid incremental evolution of Ada, this w= as a weak mission with merely incremental (i.e., defensive) feature-set. Ada 2012's de facto over-arching guiding principle: ***dot each i and cross each t*** of Ada 2005. Although again laudable in = producing the best Ada yet, this an extraordinarily weak mission with the f= eeling that Ada is so mature that Ada will likely change very little from t= his point forward. a potential Ada 202X's overt over-arching guiding principle: A la OCaml & Fortress, rethink how much ***declarative statements*** can pr= eclude imperative statements to make Ada more "math-like". 1) For example, Dmitry Kazahov's idea of setting the Ada 1983-to-2012's dat= a declarations on a new infrastructural foundation of more-primitive declar= ations. Perhaps this could permit more of an OCaml-like set of features, r= egarding type-inference and various "comprehensions", e.g., list-comprehens= ion. 2) For example, providing a wiser not-metatemplate-programming rebuttal/reb= uke to C++2011's metatemplate poor-man-functional-programming via kludges i= n C++ templates, as Round Two of Ada 1995's over-arching guiding mission of= "C++ done right". 3) For example, expand Ada's set of programming genres beyond OO/runtime-po= lymorphic programming, procedural programming, generic/compile-time-paramet= ric-polymorphic programming, parallel programming, etc to include, say, asp= ect-oriented programming declarations, functional-programming declarations,= compile-time reflection to an Ada-like source-code-generating language (e.= g., a.app rethought & expanded).