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: 103376,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada) Date: 16 Mar 2005 14:14:08 -0500 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: <1110059861.560004@athnrd02> <1110266099.441421.179290@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> <1110332933.587110.260410@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1110390097.532139.43430@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <422f3808$0$30165$ba620e4c@news.skynet.be> <1110409958.685759.249420@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <15SdnYvJ0_x3Vq3fRVn-3Q@megapath.net> <1110522060.091940.178510@l41g2000cwc.googleFollowup-To: comp.lang.ada NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01-e.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: pcls4.std.com 1111000448 24578 69.38.147.31 (16 Mar 2005 19:14:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:14:08 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9513 Date: 2005-03-16T14:14:08-05:00 List-Id: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes: > In article <1639952.z7hLqyLLQL@jellix.jlfencey.com>, Vinzent 'Gadget' Hoefler writes: > > Ioannis Vranos wrote: > > > >> Georg Bauhaus wrote: > >> > >>> Ada 2005 adds more features to the standard, including > >>> linear algebra support, and > >>> more file and network I/O. > >> > >> One question is, can these facilities be implemented with the language > >> itself, or someone has to use another language to do the real work? > > > > They can. Unlike Pascal, Ada does not know "magic" subroutines. > > What are "magic" subroutines ? > > I know of nothing by that name in VAX/DEC/Compaq/HP Pascal for VMS. It's not a Pascal term. "Magic" just means something available to the language designer or compiler writer, but not available to the programmer writing in that language. Writeln in Pascal is magic (which is a very poor language design). All languages have some magic. Ada has a bit too much, in my opinion, but it doesn't make the Writeln mistake. As I'm sure you're aware, Pascal is a different language than VAX Pascal. VAX Pascal has some extensions, some of them quite large, like exception handling. The VMS design does a very good job of making the OS language-independent, and supporting interoperability between various languages. Unix is very annoying in that regard -- the interface to the OS is highly biased toward the language in which the OS is implemented. - Bob