Re: ada without ada libraries?

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:08:37 +0100, Gautier write-only  
<gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com> a écrit:

> Interesting debate: theoretically, I would support fully Yannick.
> But when looking at my practice the strange fact is that the only DSL
> I'm using is command-line interpreter scripts.

On my own side, I sometime play with a Prolog interpreter of mine  
(designed in SML), more often with SML, commonly with SQL and XSLT and I  
was an M2T (Model To Text, which is an OMG language used in conjunction  
with UML) user, and I am seasoned with RenderMan shader language (*). Just  
that to be honest, I believe M2T and XSLT was an error, and Prolog program  
would have been a better choice (I am placing all of Ada, Prolog and SML  
at the same level, so for many things, to me, Prolog is the language of  
choice just like Ada is for some other things).

(*) Just to cite languages with execution phase. There are also many DSL  
in data representation area, what ever what data can means, but these are  
not relevant to mention here, as Ada has nothing to do with it. Oh well,  
may be there is finally one worth to note here, which is the one  
AdaControl use :-P

> I can do everything else straight in Ada, even:
> 1) on-purpose data conversions, sorting, aggregation (in one case,
> replacing a R script; the Ada version ran hundred times faster and
> solved a data modelling bottleneck for several people)
No need for a DSL here, and Ada is indeed the best choice.

> 2) 3D models (instead of VRML or MAXScript)
Depend what you do (3D means nothing alone).

> 3) random language generators (Ada is used there in a purely
> functional way)
I don't understand.

> 4) recompression of Zip archives by calling different Zippers and
> taking the best compression ratio
No need for a DSL, so Ada is OK here too.


Avoid confusion: a DSL is not the first  
lossy‑unsafe‑unreadable‑unmaintainable language with no added value you  
encounter. A DSL is not a toy language launched by who‑know‑who in a  
search of celebrity, so don't think about these when you read the word  
“DSL” somewhere. Some are good, some are bad. The multiple so  
called‑scripting languages everywhere are not DSL, they are just  
symptomatic of unfinished software which every user is supposed to  
fix/finish him/herself or symptomatic of some bad experience with  
compilation process or symptomatic of “every thing must be free as bear  
and what's free as bear here must run everywhere to get it free as bear  
everywhere”. Except for some case, most DSL are confidential and do not  
take part of the “hip” (although the concept of DSL is a bit buzzy since  
some years, but tha's DSL as a whole, not one or another in particular).

Well, all of that to say if one expect to use Ada for extremely  
everything, he/she gonna encounter some disillusions.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University