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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Georg Bauhaus Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Build language with weak typing, then add scaffolding later to strengthen it? Date: Fri, 22 May 2015 09:42:05 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: Reply-To: nonlegitur@futureapps.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 22 May 2015 07:40:56 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="aacf5f3d71cb2b15a461b98f00d662c6"; logging-data="6449"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/fRy6L3YZCsZk0H0hw8/WzYh/O6S9xQWE=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.6.0 In-Reply-To: Cancel-Lock: sha1:LGQwMk7+6bCHS6xQoJlmnqXnZ50= Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:25937 Date: 2015-05-22T09:42:05+02:00 List-Id: On 21.05.15 21:11, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote: > In Ada, none of this is needed, This claim may be a little bold. Even thinking from "inside" Ada. For example, the recently introduced aspects of types show how "strong" Ada types really are, that is, how expressive the Ada type system really has been. Actually, the effort that has produced Ada may have spurred an idea of how not to design a language. Obviously, for all willing to see it that way, it was a big failure, C having taken its place in embedded systems. While the greed, and the opportunism associated with its design situation are on record, still, obviously, the socioeconomic failure carries over to the qualities of the design process. Right? Who would want to do that again? > So, why do language designers design computer languages with weak > typing, and then spend so much effort later on to fixing the > weak typing? Is it because it is easier to design a language with > weak typing than strong one? Are you sure there ware professional language designers around when these languages were defined? Maybe now, within Microsoft's X# set. Maybe around Scala. Maybe atETH Zürich. But with other "designs", it seems that a language is just inspired by what its creators happen to have learned. (Which, sometimes, is type inference in ML.) Designing something better, more inclusively, requires voluntary co-operation of competitors in industry… It requires deviating from just having grads do something™ in their spare time and let The Market do the rest. Is anything being done, language-wise, by industry? Or are their needs taken care of (nominally) by the existing language vendors instead? Certainly, an ad hoc language like JavaScript, created by young grads, was pushed by popularity, the drivers being from the sales department; that's on record. Once the language is out the door, having gained some traction, it would take someone bold to replace it with something much better. So, not sales staff. Once the language is out, no one takes any risks, the business is established. So, instead, PHP, C, Fortran etc. get all bells and whistles that you can get for money (sic), by hiring compiler makers who need employment anyway. Hence, for example, the Hack language and HHVM, were motivated and financed by Facebook; this should keep PHP in place. Thus our collective boldness (none) makes crappy languages stay. The improved compilers help saving one's face. Good.