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: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-27 09:29:16 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!newsfeed.mathworks.com.MISMATCH!newsfeed!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died (was): 64 bit addressing and OOP Date: 27 Apr 2003 12:29:15 -0400 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: <3E5C7033.BD5DC462@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0302260618.7506cba7@posting.google.com> <3E5CF5C6.84822F57@adaworks.com> <8qkczsAcGcn+Ew83@nildram.co.uk> <3EA04A1E.CAFC1FEF@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0304221126.7112b7d5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: pcls4.std.com 1051460956 8077 199.172.62.241 (27 Apr 2003 16:29:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 16:29:16 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:62777 comp.object:62109 comp.lang.ada:36651 Date: 2003-04-27T12:29:15-04:00 List-Id: xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > Robert A Duff wrote: > > "Chad R. Meiners" writes: > > >> Array slicing is a wonderfully useful feature. I use this feature > in almost > >> every program of mine. > > > Really!? I think of array slicing as a pretty minor feature of Ada, > > which causes a lot of trouble for compiler writers, that could be > > dispensed with. After all, you could write a function that grabs those > > components. > > > I'm thinking particularly of slices as L-values. Do you ever use that? > > It might be "minor" now, but if Ada is ever to stand beside Fortran as > a programming language for supercomputers, it is awfully nice that > this much of the needed semantics are "already in there"; they were a > huge shock when they first hit Fortran all in a lump. I'm afraid that Ada's array-slicing capabilities are too restrictive (compared to Fortran) to qualify for the "already in there". > [And by the way, since I've drifted away from Ada for lack of job > prospects for an Ada beginner without a current security clearance, Sorry to hear that. I've been working on-and-off on Ada-related stuff for many years, with no security clearance. It's not just military stuff, you know. >... is > there any effort underway to add the syntactic sugar for supercomputer > programming to Ada in an upcoming standard's language revision, No, as far as I know, there is no serious work underway for such syntactic sugar. (Or, as Dr Chaos points out -- it's really semantic sugar.) Some proposals were made during the development of Ada 95. It wouldn't take much... But: >... or is > Ada down to "don't rock the boat" editorial cleanup standards (that > would eventually doom the language) for the foreseeable future, or is > there some big worthwhile effort but in another direction?] No, it's not in "don't rock the boat" mode -- changes to Ada are being made in other directions. - Bob