Re: on package naming, should the word "_pkg" be part of it?

[Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org>]

On 11 Oct 2001 08:34:01 -0700, Robert* @ wrote:
> 
> Languages get changed all the time. If a language does not adopt it dies.
> 
> Ada itself changed. we had Ada83, then came Ada95 to add OO features becuase
> that what was needed to keep Ada moving along with the current needs of
> software.
> 
> C changed, C++ came from C to add OO to it.
> 
> Fortran changed. now we have fortran 90.
> 
> COBOL changed.
> 
> Java is being changed to add generics to it.
> 
> may be the word change is troubling, may the word improve is better.
> 
> The point is, if a langauge does not adopt and improve with time, it will be
> left behind, and people will go use (what is seen as) more modern languages.

You are arguing; Ada has to change syntax as the languages X, Y and Z
have done this. How can you claim that C -> C++ was a syntax change? How
can you say that the change in any of the language above (with the
exeption of COBOL which I do not know) was motivated by a wish for
changing the syntax? :-) As fas as I know the changes were because new
methology was added, like OO.

I have to use Fortran 77 from time to time, and even as painful as its
syntax is I do not want a Fortran 78 that has only changed some syntax
aspects and thus break compability with all the available Fortran 77
source the project has.

Ada 95 on the other hand has a beautiful and clear syntax which I like
very much. I like to read letters and numbers to a bunch of dots,
brackets, arrows etc... I understand that people from the C(++) and
likes doesn't at first like the somewhat more verbose syntax. I remember
I was not liking the Ada syntax at first as I thought it was like
Pascals (we had to use pascal at the university and I didn't like it as
it was a strict language where you still could crash the computer due to
the use of pointers.), but as I looked more at Ada source code I noticed
that it was so easy to read it and I found soon to prefer it to the
C(++) syntax.

Syntax like ++ -- *= etc is junk which only leads to error in your
programs.

If writing:

   Counter := Counter + 1;

is too long to write then simply make a macro in you editor so that you
can write: Counter++; and it automatically expands it into the line
above, or write a preprocessor that can translate your code.

Doing stuff like: if (++Counter == Max) { ... is IMHO pure stupidity if
you ever want to be able to read your source code.

As for the .method notation there is a very good example in the link I
posted earlier.

So I hope Ada won't change syntax and at least not to one that is worse
than it currently has.

Preben Randhol