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From: "G.B." <bauhaus@futureapps.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Running a preprocessor from GPS?
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2015 16:11:26 +0200
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Date: 2015-07-30T16:11:26+02:00
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On 30.07.15 14:15, EGarrulo wrote:
> Now, I think that if a
> language is conceptually sound, then it shouldn't take long
> to explain its core concepts, don't you agree?

Actually, I think there is a fallacy at work here.
Conceptually sound only if quickly explained?

Like C++, Ada has sets of core concepts, and their integration.  It
shares this property with other bigger languages.  Exciting as it
might be to see how everything in a language can be built on top of
very few things, more so if one already knows the few things, the
language designers did not choose to present everything in their
language this way.  Mathematics doesn't teach 1 + 2 from set theoretic
definitions of 1 and 2, or even routinely perform "+" in this way;
neither will languages like C++, or Ada, do the equivalent.
That is, they all offer higher abstractions, and also their
integration. Both need some learning (and unlearning).  (As regards
learning, consider how the computational power of C++ templates was
discovered only after the fact; they were not quickly explained
and understood at all!)

This was addressed by Jean Ichbiah in his 1984 interview.  He said,
IIRC, that if two guys sitting in the corner do not understand
everything of a bigger language at once, that doesn't mean that the
language is unsound, or useless, or unmaintainable, or whatever.  (It
seems likely that the two guys' last names were among Hoare, Dijkstra,
and Wirth.)