Re: [OT] interesting reason why a language is considered good

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> wrote in message 
news:4f8d1fdf$0$6638$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net...
> On 17.04.12 05:43, Randy Brukardt wrote:
...
> There is an curious phenomenon here: everyone seems to be
> concentrating on parameter names. A case in which there is
> context.

It's not a "phenomenon". It's the entire point. There are places, even in 
Ada code, where there is enough context such that very short names are 
sufficient. (Another such case is names of primitive operations of tagged 
types.) In those cases, the very short names often turn out to be reserved.

I don't care that much about "fixing" this "problem". In particular, "when" 
is just an example. And it is one of the words that would be a major problem 
if not reserved (you really need reserved words to delinate between parts of 
major syntax structures, such as the limbs of a case statement). So I don't 
see a future in which "when" would not be reserved.

Plus, there is a major disconnect within WG 9 over reserved words. Most of 
the ARG believes that Ada has too many reserved words and could use an 
"unreserved keyword" concept (things like "some" and "until" belong in that 
category; there is little parsing value to having them reserved). However, 
every version of Ada (95, 2005, 2012) has that idea removed by WG 9. This 
happens because WG 9 votes by country, and most of the ARG supporters of the 
idea are from the US; Europeans tend to hate the idea. (This split happens 
very rarely, this is issue is the only one I recall.)

So I doubt very much there ever will be a change in this in Ada.

                                     Randy.