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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?
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From: Markus E Leypold
 <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>
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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:12:22 +0100
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Date: 2007-01-24T13:12:22+01:00
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Hi Ludovic,

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

> kevin  cline writes:
>> But the point was that expressiveness drives programmers to new
>> languages, and Ada isn't particularly expressive.
>
> On the contrary, I think that Ada is the most expressive language
> around.  

If I were in the business of language advocacy as some people in this
thread obviously are, I'd now cry: "FUD!!"

Anyway, I have to contradict. You'd have to restrict the scope
of your statement a bit (to a special application area or a specific
subset of all programming languages) for it to become true.

I stipulate that languages with a Hindley-Milner type system and/or
functional languages are, in many aspects, more expressive. Even more
so, if they have modules, functors and classes (like OCaml) does.

Or consider Haskell which is a VERY expressive language.

Of course it all depends a bit on how you define "expressiveness".

I do not want to denigrate Ada here. But I think judging the place of
Ada in the world right is more important (or useful to Ada or the
community) than claming ALL the superlatives for Ada.


> procedure Set_Bit_In_Register (At_Address : in System.Address) is
>    type Register is array (1 .. 32) of Boolean;
>    pragma Pack (Register);
>    for Register'Bit_Order use System.High_Order_First;
>    pragma Volatile (Register);
>    
>    R : Register;
>    for R'Address use At_Address;
> begin
>    Register (4) := True;
> end;
>
> versus
>
> void set_bit_in_register (volatile unsigned long * at_address)
> {
>    *at_address |= 2 << 3;
> }


<cynical mode>

You're sure you're not confusing verbosity with "expressiveness"? :-)

</cynical mode>


Regards -- Markus