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 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!newsfeed.fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de!reality.xs3.de!news.jacob-sparre.dk!loke.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Your wish list for Ada 202X Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:35:17 -0500 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <7f1c01c5-3563-4b94-9831-152dbbf2ecdc@googlegroups.com> <206rutb9pqak$.11a3dufqvmrm4.dlg@40tude.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: loke.gir.dk 1395956117 3267 69.95.181.76 (27 Mar 2014 21:35:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 21:35:17 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:19008 Date: 2014-03-27T16:35:17-05:00 List-Id: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" wrote in message news:o55d8h8hmzjb.591frxr75ryx$.dlg@40tude.net... > On Wed, 26 Mar 2014 16:06:18 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote: > >> Commenting here is precisely the problem. > > But people don't post/read AI and Ada-Comment preferring c.l.a because > Usenet group is more comfortable and easier to use for discussions and > informal exchange. > > If you want to make Ada-Comment more vital move it to Usenet, Web group > etc. Though, isn't it so that Ada-Comment and AI are meant to be > unwelcoming in order to filter traffic? I wouldn't characterize it as "meant to be unwelcoming"; after all, it was pretty much state-of-art when it originally was defined (in the early 1990s, for Ada 9x). It just hasn't changed much since then (last major change was in 1998, when I took over hosting it). The AI mechanism is even older; it's pretty similar to the mechanism used during Ada 83, so it dates back to at least the mid-1980s. The only major change there is the online formatted access to them (I added that a few years back), and as that is done by automatically adding formatting to plain text documents, it's not perfect. But it is true that we don't want lots of chit-chat on Ada-Comment. Everything said there goes into the permanent record somewhere, so off-topic stuff would become a problem. (That's the major reason that I still file these messages by hand; it's hard to imagine an automated system that could do as good a job of putting messages where they belong. We also do a level of triage on the comments, putting queries that are adequately answered on-line into ACs where they don't clutter the ARG's agenda. [Originally, everything posted to Ada-Comment had to be handled as an AI, which meant there was always a bunch of junk AIs on the agenda -- a lousy use of limited resources.) > Shouldn't there be forums to discuss technical issues separately from > fundamental language concepts, ignoring distracting technicalities? I'm not sure how one could "discuss technical issues" without considering "distracting technicalities". That's kind of the point, after all -- not everything that makes sense in the abstract makes sense for Ada because it has to fit into the existing type system somehow -- even ignoring absolute compatibility. For instance, a lot ideas don't make sense for by-copy types, or by-reference types, or discriminated types -- and those things are surely going to exist in a future Ada. We've occassionally talked about using other sorts of forums, but that tends to conflict with the mandate for a permanent record that's not tied to a particular technology [as technologies disappear over time -- but we still go back into the archives to understand old issues from time-to-time (it's too bad to we don't have the Ada 83 discussions on line, although apparently they're in a series of boxes in John Goodenough's office -- on printouts -- they're kinda hard to search).] For instance, a wiki might make sense for some tasks, but it doesn't appear that there would be any sensible way to extract the history from them for long-term use. You can do it using the platform, but when it goes away (and all of these things will go away someday, especially cloud platforms where you're dependent on others to keep it functioning) all of that is lost. Randy.