Re: From extended Pascals to Ada 95 guide

[marcov@snail.stack.nl (Marco van de Voort)]

In article <39A655BE.18E89020@maths.unine.ch>, Gautier wrote:
>James Smith:
>
>> Too bad the US gov didn't save some taxpayer dollars by just adopting Modula
>> 2. Of course that would have made too much sense.
>
>To save dollars they also could have adopted C...

Then the American subs would lie on the bottom of the ocean too I think:-)

C is simply known to introduce more bugs.

>With Modula-2, they should have spent perhaps more than Ada to make it usable...

Can't judge that, don't know ADA enough.

>The main problem with Modula-2 is that it keeps the rigid types
>of "classic" Pascal. No problem for teaching or write a
>"Pascal in Pascal" compiler, but for the real world you need
>a flexible typing like "array(integer range <>) of..."

That type safety avoids bugs. In the real world where you whack a GUI for
some users that is less of a problem. 
In subs, you don't want that.

>The second problem is the modularity: you have to open manually
>the visibility for *all* identifiers you need!

Or use them qualified. Again a very good principle, which I miss dearly from
pascal, introduced again to avoid bugs.

> It made things
>easier for writing a compiler, but it rapidily took longer to
>write and maintain the "FROM...IMPORT..."s, with correct casing,
>than to write your programs. Just extrapolate the "Hello World"
>to have an idea...

>MODULE PrintHelloWorld;
>
>FROM InOut IMPORT WriteString, WriteLn;
>
>BEGIN
>        WriteString('Hello world!');
>        WriteLn;
>END PrintHelloWorld.

I don't see any problem?

>Another big problem was the library: there were vague recommendations
>for text I/O, and iirc, nothing more. As a result, even "Hello World"
>was non portable: some compilers wanted "WriteString('Hello world!');",
>others wanted "WRITESTRING('Hello world!');" I let you guess what the
>mess was with Math libraries...

Also not a problem when an uniform system througout the military is used.

>Finally I doubt that the average US programmer would have been
>patient enough to stand more than 5 minutes before Modula-2...

If they get confused by this,  then they shouldn't be programming critical 
applications at all.