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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: why learn C?
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:27:01 -0400
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2007-04-12T14:27:01-04:00
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Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

>...Having dynamic types is what leads to Ada's
> requirement of explicit instantiation.

I don't understand that.  Ada's types are entirely compile time, and
generic instantiation happens at compile time.  It is true that Ada's
subtypes can have dynamic constraints, and when you pass one to a
generic, there is some data stored at run time (array bounds or
whatever).  But I don't see any way in which that would prevent
me from designing an Ada-like language with implicit instantiation.

I think implicit instantiation is probably a good idea.  As you said in
another post, it's something like overloading of subprograms, and I
think it can be designed so that it's not too error prone.

If I remember, the C++ rules include preference rules, though.  Is that
correct?  Preference rules can cause Beaujolais effects, which in my
opinion are very bad.

- Bob