Re: Ada and Java/C++

[Brian Drummond <brian@shapes.demon.co.uk>]

On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:14:39 -0700, Adam Beneschan wrote:

> On Monday, August 27, 2012 4:16:39 PM UTC-7, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> 
>> I agree with you here (but also see below). But the syntax of a
>> language is a very important part of the foundation of the language.
>> Ada's syntax is designed to minimize the possibility for inadvertant
>> errors, which is not the case with the C syntax. 

> Hmmm ... I guess it depends on just how much of the syntax the OP is
> thinking of keeping.  I'd think that if we're just talking about the
> "look and feel", one could probably develop a language that has the
> functionality of Ada but using C-like keywords and operators, without
> compromising safety.  

I suspect you are onto something here ... I believe the OP meant not the 
syntax, but the lexical level of the language. A lot of the "feel" of a 
page of source comes from the tokens used, rather than the order of their 
arrangement. 

Changing begin and end to { and } does not change the syntax a jot*, but 
makes the language look a lot more like C. And I suspect THAT is what the 
OP intended. 
(I appreciate that would leave a lot of work around things like 
conditional statements, to make them "look right" while preserving their 
syntactic advantages. But bear with me...)

Perhaps it could be run through a simple macro preprocessor and turned 
into Ada.

> I'm not saying it's a good idea. Personally, if
> someone sent me a compiler for a language like that, I wouldn't just
> delete it from my system, I'd print it out just so that I could run it
> through a shredder and then stomp on it.
> 
> But some changes, like using [] instead of () for array indices or { }
> instead of begin/end or expressing type conversions as (type)expression
> instead of type(expression), wouldn't seem to have any negative impacts
> on safety.  (Just on aesthetics.)  

And refactoring, when you substitute evaluation for lookup, or vice versa.

> The point is that if the OP's premise is correct--that Java is popular
> because it borrows from C syntax even though it eliminated some of the
> unsafe and error-prone things from the language, then in theory, a
> mutant Ada language with C-like syntax could do the same.  If I were
> induced by a very large sum of money to help develop such a language,
> I'd want to make some changes like (1) making assignment statements
> statements rather than expressions, ...

While agreeing with your list, I would go further and simply keep Ada's 
syntax largely intact*; restricting the changes to what can be 
accomplished at the lexical analysis stage.

* I don't see that transforming "a += b" into "a := a + b" etc would 
break this model...

- Brian