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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 11232c,e59a9d893a249e86 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac39a12d5faf5b14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-18 07:44:54 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!skates!not-for-mail From: Stephen Leake Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: new Ada language features needed? Followup-To: comp.lang.ada Date: 18 Apr 2002 10:44:22 -0400 Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (skates.gsfc.nasa.gov) Message-ID: References: <3CB46975.90408@snafu.de> <5ee5b646.0204171415.18ac5e85@posting.google.com> <99c4aee4a9ea33ca8fbe1e634b3b4f14.48257@mygate.mailgate.org> <3CBE49C4.99CFA22D@adaworks.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.gsfc.nasa.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: skates.gsfc.nasa.gov 1019141445 19662 128.183.220.71 (18 Apr 2002 14:50:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.gsfc.nasa.gov NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Apr 2002 14:50:45 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22725 misc.misc:6584 Date: 2002-04-18T14:50:45+00:00 List-Id: "Kent Paul Dolan" writes: > "Richard Riehle" wrote: > > [...] > > > I'd say that, despite its failure to become popular, Ada is evolving > > as it should as a language. We do need more tools, development > > environments, GUI builders, and debugging environments, but those > > are not a concern of the language designers. Rather, they are the > > concern of people who use the language as it is designed. > > A useful set of words, but not responsive to a posting in which the > things mentioned (better parsing capabilities, What's wrong with the parsing capabilities in the GNAT Spitbol and regexp packages? Or the GNAT front end, or OpenToken? What, exactly, needs to be added to the language to better support parsing? > programming by contract) In some forms, this does need more language support than Ada currently provides. However, I have yet to see convincing proof that it is worth it. I've seen simple examples where the effort needed to write and compute the contract is comparable to the effort needed to write and compute the code; that's a marginal gain. For real-life, complex code, thorough unit testing is a far more efficient use of my time and the CPU's time, and the current Ada features that allow defining and enforcing interfaces to software subsystems are just fine. > were explicitly things that very much need to be part of the > language, not some library capability. -- -- Stephe