Inventors of the Holder container

Inventors of the Holder container

[marius63]

"I've been using this 'holder' approach for years." (Alex Mosteo, in another thread)

Me too. But I've got proof :-)

http://www.liaad.up.pt/~maa/no_pointers/page_n230.html

(example application => http://www.liaad.up.pt/~maa/no_pointers/page_n153_with_notes.html)

Maybe this time they'll recall our names when writing the acknowledgements section of RM 2012...

"... the simplest way is to make your own with any other of the standard containers..." (Alex)

Curiously enough, exactly how I proposed it.

http://www.liaad.up.pt/~maa/no_pointers/page_n210_with_notes.html

(Kind of like String types should be implemented as Vector containers. Bring a sense of balance to the universe.)

Re: Inventors of the Holder container

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 09/29/2011 07:34 AM, marius63 wrote:
> "I've been using this 'holder' approach for years." (Alex Mosteo, in another thread)
>
> Me too. But I've got proof :-)
>
> "... the simplest way is to make your own with any other of the standard containers..." (Alex)
>
> Curiously enough, exactly how I proposed it.

I think this is one of those "obvious" things that has been (re-)invented many 
times by many people.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"C++ is like jamming a helicopter inside a Miata
and expecting some sort of improvement."
Drew Olbrich
51

Re: Inventors of the Holder container

[Randy Brukardt]

"Jeffrey Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org> wrote in message 
news:j62cmj$gof$1@tornado.tornevall.net...
> On 09/29/2011 07:34 AM, marius63 wrote:
>> "I've been using this 'holder' approach for years." (Alex Mosteo, in 
>> another thread)
>>
>> Me too. But I've got proof :-)
>>
>> "... the simplest way is to make your own with any other of the standard 
>> containers..." (Alex)
>>
>> Curiously enough, exactly how I proposed it.
>
> I think this is one of those "obvious" things that has been (re-)invented 
> many times by many people.

Right. Pretty much everything about containers has been (re-)invented over 
and over and over...

Not being able to read other people's minds, but my recollection is that the 
holder container came up pretty organically in the ARG, while we were 
discussing a problem with the use of the proposed ASIS semantic interface. 
We had examples that needed to store class-wide objects as local variable, 
and someone suggested that a container could be used to store them. And then 
someone suggested that such a container should be part of the standard 
library. And someone was assigned to make a formal proposal.

Note that an important part of the Ada.Containers packages was to suggest a 
layout for such packages, and pretty much every new package proposed 
following that layout is going to look the same.

In any case, if you want credit for some package in the Standard, you need 
to present a proposal including RM-quality wording. Ideas are a 
dime-a-dozen -- everyone has proposed some package or other, but only a few 
have gone to the hard work of providing RM wording for them. (And then gone 
through the bloody process of getting the ARG to like your work.) I've done 
two (Ada.Directories and Ada.Containers.Multiway_Trees) -- and proposing new 
features like expression functions was not half as hard. (Part of the 
problem is that everyone has an opinion on the right way to design packages; 
that's much less true for language features.) I have an amazing amount of 
respect for Matt Heaney's efforts in getting Ada.Containers into language 
form in the first place -- because I realize how hard it is to have people 
continually pick at your best efforts, finding flaws that you're not even 
sure are flaws.

                                                  Randy.

Re: Inventors of the Holder container

[Simon Wright]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> I have an amazing amount of respect for Matt Heaney's efforts in
> getting Ada.Containers into language form in the first place --
> because I realize how hard it is to have people continually pick at
> your best efforts, finding flaws that you're not even sure are flaws

I only saw this from (quite a long way) outside, but -- seconded!

Re: Inventors of the Holder container

[Marius Amado-Alves]

Heaney is the undisputed creator of Ada.Containers (someone else had to "go through the bloody process of getting the ARG" and Heaney to include indefinite elements though).

Randy, we all co-invented the thing in 2004 (for Ada 2005).

<<"Cells" seems better to me. Short is always good!>> (Randy, in http://www.ada-auth.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/ais/ai-30302.txt?rev=1.23)

I guess it just was not "organic" enough to get standardized back then.

Bit of Ada history.

Re: Inventors of the Holder container

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:34:34 +0200, marius63 <amado.alves@gmail.com> a  
écrit:

> "I've been using this 'holder' approach for years." (Alex Mosteo, in  
> another thread)
>
> Me too. But I've got proof :-)
>
> http://www.liaad.up.pt/~maa/no_pointers/page_n230.html

In http://www.liaad.up.pt/~maa/no_pointers/page_n30.html
You should update this statement: “Function parameter modes can only be in  
(default) or access”. It is now wrong.


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