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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-06 17:31:36 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail From: David Starner Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2.91 (As She Crawled Across the Table (Debian GNU/Linux)) Message-Id: Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <20040206174017.7E84F4C4114@lovelace.ada-france.org> <54759e7e.0402071124.322ea376@posting.google.com> <406EB6D2.8030801@noplace.com> <87d66pyw1g.fsf@insalien.org> <406EEC35.7040109@noplace.com> <874qs0zvy1.fsf@insalien.org> <40714C98.90601@noplace.com> <1073gv22t969q5a@corp.supernews.com> <40729B9D.30906@noplace.com> <1076000ef5oj06f@corp.supernews.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2004 00:31:36 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.72.70.173 X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net X-Trace: bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net 1081297896 12.72.70.173 (Wed, 07 Apr 2004 00:31:36 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2004 00:31:36 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6791 Date: 2004-04-07T00:31:36+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 14:07:36 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote: > Bullpucky. *Ada* (not some company or implementation) is a general-purpose > programming language. Nothing more and nothing less. Let's say I want to write a dict server - RFC 2229. I can go with C, and get POSIX-standardized networking code, but a ill-defined, clumsy system for handling international text that may or may not support UTF-8. I could go with Perl or Python or Java and get networking code and strong support for UTF-8 in the basic package. Or I could go with Ada. There's no standard networking code, and no way to input UTF-8 - I can't even input it into the basic character type and process it, not and stay within the standard. (Of course, that's what everyone does.) Worse yet, there's no standard or even existing libraries (IIRC) that will normalize Unicode text or sort it in a language dependent manner. It may be general-purpose, but it doesn't fit this purpose. Given that a lot of programs need to access the net and handle the world's languages, that's pretty bad.