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: 103376,79bbf7e359159d0d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-09 18:42:09 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!uunet!sea.uu.net!lax.uu.net!sac.uu.net!ash.uu.net!world!bobduff From: Robert A Duff Subject: Re: newbie can't get exceptions to work! Sender: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 01:41:12 GMT References: <25%y6.2364$jz.201607@www.newsranger.com> <3ACDB29E.45B91316@earthlink.net> Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6686 Date: 2001-04-10T01:41:12+00:00 List-Id: Brian Rogoff writes: > On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Robert A Duff wrote: > > I suspect that to make a *popular* language these days, you have to make > > it look like C (yuck), > > Python isn't popular? Visual Basic? Granted. And Lisp and Smalltalk are still popular in in their niche. And Perl is popular, though I find it an abomination. > I don't think you need to go quite as far as Cyclone. Dump "begin end" and > use "{ }". Well, it's not just "begin end", but also "if ... end if", "procedure P ... end P", and so forth. Anyway, I like being able to see what the "end" is end of (as in "end if" or "end P"), so I don't like just "}". >... If you keep the procedure/function distinction, use shorter > names. I would call them both "procedure". I find the C syntax for functions very unreadable -- it's hard to tell a procedure header from an expression. >... Use [] for arrays. Agreed. > Use Pascal notation for pointers. Yes! I hate ".all", and I long for the days of "X^.Y". >... Provide some > shortcut operators like C. OK, but I might decide to call it Incr(X) instead X++. >... Keep Ada's modes. OK, so the language may look > a bit different from Ada syntactically but I think it could stay in the > spirit of Ada semantically. > > > and you have to have enough money to generate large amounts of hype. Sigh. > > It's not clear to me that that approach is such a win. There is something > of a Java backlash too. If I could design a language that inspired as much backlash as Java, I would consider myself quite a success! >... What do I know though, I write OCaml these days. I'd > rather be an idealist than someone who follows the PL trends. - Bob