Re: What would you like in Ada202X?

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

<anon@att.net> wrote in message news:jnbqqa$tb$2@speranza.aioe.org...
> >I can't remember all the details (there is a recording on-line for
>>that), but one of his points was (as I understand it) that whatever we
>>add to Ada should either simplify it (if that is possible) or be a
>>"killer feature" for attracting new people to Ada.
>
> Adding additions to Ada should be simple. And never repeat that "NEVER"
> copied from another language. Such as conditional statements or functions
> that look like and act like "C procedure statements." Because people will
> say "Ada is trying to become C, and its better to use the real thing,
> instead of a copy cat with issues."

Huh? "Conditional statements" have been in every programming language since 
the beginning of time. Perhaps you meant "conditional expressions", a 
feature present in Algol 60 (which predates C by more than 10 years), and a 
language which is a direct ancestor of Ada (Algol-60 => Algol-W => Pascal => 
Ada).

I have no clue what a "procedure statement" is; I remember no such thing in 
C. No matter, "expression functions" were created solely from my own 
imagination. I doubt they are unique (the need occurs in every programming 
language for large systems), but I know for a fact that the idea was not 
based on any feature present in any other programming language.

...
> Second altering existing paradigms such as "return-by-reference" to
> "return-by-type". which kills existing code and destroys a number of
> features in existing codes. And these feature were a plus to Ada. Which
> now makes Ada useless for backwards compatibility for programs that
> use these features.

Good riddence. "return-by-reference" is garbage. We tried to use it in Claw 
and it is impossible (because you can never define the object to return in 
any reasonable way.

...
> And there are plenty of features in Ada 2012. Most should be plugged
> before the final ARG vote. Because a lot of these features are not
> worth having if they hurt Ada.

The "final ARG vote" happened in early March. Ada 2012 is in the 
standardization channel now with no further changes planned.

                          Randy.

P.S. Yes, everyone, I know I'm feeding the troll. As usual, it's bad to 
leave these misconceptions around in the permanent record of the Internet...