Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada?

["Alexander E. Kopilovich" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> > ... It seems that
> > the thing can be really useful and really belongs to one of natural Ada
> > domains, so it is hard to believe that it was not done... and if it wasn't
> > then there should be not-too-obvious obstables or resistances. Perhaps there
> > are some problems with patents, licenses etc.? Or something else?
> > 
> I'm not sure what you are referring to here. The style in which the 
> Simulink (and other) tools operate?

It may be anything involved - nomeclature of elements, outlook... given that
Windows taskbar is patented by Microsoft, one may expect anything is that area
these days.

Anyway, it seems curious enough, and probably I'll take a look at that
Simulink. Therefore, if you know some good review of Simulink then please
let me know.

> Ada has fantastic math potential - look at the precise definitions of 
> mathematical types & operations and the prefabricated mathematical 
> functions built in.

I wouldn't call that fantastic - it is just good enough for developing
computational software. But mathematics isn't just numerical computation,
it involves more advanced thinking (even in a case when the final aim is
a computation), and therefore it needs more flexibility than Ada provides.
Ada's degree of flexibility is perhaps exactly right for the purposes of Ada,
but it is isn't very good for mathematics. Perhaps that is difference between
"mathematics" and "math"? -:)

Note that insufficient flexibility may harm readability. And terseness may
either harm or aid readability depending of circumstances.

> What makes APL in any way BETTER?

Several things: 1) it is very terse (and you may recall that mathematicians
generally like terseness in formulaes; in particular, they persistently invent
denotations for that); 2) it provides excellent repertoire of array-wide
operations (including multi-dimensional arrays); 3) it is generally
well-thought from mathematical viewpoint - indeed, one of its explicit
purposes was to provide a mathematical teaching tool.

> Could it be that 
> it just simply provides some intrinsic statistical operations?

No, but it provides very useful and natural intrinsic array-wide operations.

> Is there 
> some reason Ada cannot provide some (semi)standard library full of 
> statistical functions? (Its going to provide some standard vector and 
> matrix functions) Is it lack of capability or lack of will?

Ada certainly can provide such a library, but it will not be much different
for a real end-user (even for a professional statistician) comparing with
C/C++ library with similar contents.

What may be different with APL is that the user can intervene at the source
code level and customize the library (or simply read the source code and
understand some subtleties) - being competent in statistics only, but not
necessary in software engineering.