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-Thread: 5b1e799cdb,3ef3e78eacf6f938 X-Google-Attributes: gid5b1e799cdb,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!news4.google.com!feeder1-2.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder1-1.proxad.net!oleane.net!oleane!hunter.axlog.fr!nobody From: Jean-Pierre Rosen Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.pascal.misc,comp.programming Subject: Re: Alternatives to C: ObjectPascal, Eiffel, Ada or Modula-3? Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:14:02 +0200 Organization: Adalog Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: mailhost.axlog.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: s1.news.oleane.net 1248095171 15362 195.25.228.57 (20 Jul 2009 13:06:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@oleane.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:06:11 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (Windows/20090605) In-Reply-To: Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.eiffel:332 comp.lang.ada:7180 comp.lang.modula3:58 comp.lang.pascal.misc:304 comp.programming:11895 Date: 2009-07-20T17:14:02+02:00 List-Id: tm a �crit : > That is exactly the area where Ada left the path of Pascal. Pascal > was designed to be easy to implement. Nicklaus Wirth had good > reasons to keep the implementation simple. He once said (IIRC): > > What can be parsed easily by a compiler can also be > parsed easily by a human and this can be an asset. Parsing is not the difficult part of an Ada compiler. > [...] > Many languages try to make the job of writing a program easier > and at the same time make the job of reading programs is > harder. All this wonderful "do what I mean" concepts used by > many languages fail in some cases. True, but this does not apply to Ada. Ada was designed with requirements that explicitely required ease of reading over ease of writing. > IMHO complex compilation processes are an indication > of hard-to-understand concepts or hard-to-read constructs. > As such a complex compilation process only seemingly > (and not really) makes programming easier. > Not at all. Let me take an example to show you what I meant. If you have a record (in Pascal) or struct (in C), you are not allowed to compare them directly. Why? because records may contain gaps that shouldn't be compared, and skipping the gaps was deemed too much work for the compiler. In Ada, there is no problem writing: if Rec1 = Rec2 then .... would you argue that it is /less/readable than writing: if Rec1.F1 = Rec2.F1 and Rec1.F2 = Rec2.F2 and Rec1.F2 = Rec2.F3... -- --------------------------------------------------------- J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr) Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr