Re: C/C++ programmer giving Ada95 a chance -- writing an emulator.

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>]

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:

> Is the Ada 95 RM more precise? I am not 100% convinced at all.
> Looking at the set of AI's that are coming in, we are seeing the
> same kinds of minor gaps and errors that happened with the
> Ada 83 RM, I would be hard put to say there was a big
> qualitative difference in the scope of AI's considered in the
> two cases. Bob (Duff) what do you think on that score?

I think the Ada Issues from the Ada 83 era are "bigger" (on average)
than the Ada 95 ones, in two senses: more impact on users, and more
difficult to fix without damaging other parts of the language.

I'm not so sure that's because the RM is more precise.  That could be
part of it, but it is also the case that the Ada 83 design was a bigger
job (from scratch language design, as opposed to a modification of 5% of
an existing language) -- so you would expect bigger bugs.

The above is just my gut feel.  It might be interesting to go through
all the AI's and rate them more-or-less objectively and add up the
ratings.  But not interesting enough for me to waste time doing it!  ;-)

>... [I
> think Bob's input here is useful since he knows both RM's
> well and both sets of AI's, and if biased at all would be
> biased to thinking the 95 AI's are less significant (*)
> 
> (*) in fact, I never noticed Bob's viewpoints being perceptibly
> affected by bias of any kind :-) even though he is constantly
> warning that as an author he may be biased!

Well, that's a nice thing to say.  Thanks!

- Bob