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: backlog3.nntp.dca3.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!feeder01.blueworldhosting.com!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!gandalf.srv.welterde.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: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 16:08:23 -0500 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <7f1c01c5-3563-4b94-9831-152dbbf2ecdc@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: loke.gir.dk 1396645704 1631 69.95.181.76 (4 Apr 2014 21:08:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 21:08:24 +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: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:185527 Date: 2014-04-04T16:08:23-05:00 List-Id: "Dan'l Miller" wrote in message news:f17effcf-af74-4a1d-9393-4149fe5a666c@googlegroups.com... ... >Ada 2012's de facto over-arching guiding principle: >***dot each i and cross each t*** of Ada 2005. Although again laudable in > producing the best Ada yet, this an extraordinarily weak mission with the > feeling that Ada is so mature that Ada will likely change very little from > this > point forward. That's wrong. There really were two overarching principles for Ada 2012: (1) Bring contract-oriented programming to the Ada mainstream; (2) Embrace the shift to container-oriented programming by making the set of containers richer and easier to use. Almost everything that was done falls into one of these two categories. The real-time stuff does not, but that's mainly handled by a separate group from the main Ada development effort -- we just try to make their ideas fit into the Standard. For instance, all of the expanded expression features exist mainly to make it more practical to write contract expressions and to allow compilers and tools to analyze them. Aspect clauses come from the realization that pragmas just don't cut it for defining contracts (which drove the wider realization that they really don't cut it for anything entity-specific). The iterator features exist to make iterating over a container much more like iterating over a built-in data structure. Same for the indexing and generalized reference features. It's too early to say what the goal for the next version of Ada will be. Surely there will be some clean-up of existing features (there always is), but that's not a very good reason for a new language standard. (That's more the job of a Corrigendum, one of which is likely in the next year or so.) Most likely, I would expect a push for finer-grained parallelism, and possibly for additional contract features. But I really don't know. We're unlikely to turn around so quickly this time; while the feeling was that Ada 2005 wasn't quite finished [needed bounded containers, contract features, etc.], there is no such feeling for Ada 2012. I think we'll need to see clear needs from the user community before jumping in again (but I could be wrong). Randy.