Re: status of Ada STL?

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) writes:

> dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) wrote in message news:<4519e058.0206170753.599fd771@posting.google.com>...
> > 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) wrote in message news:<bebbba07.0206162248.45b6174e@posting.google.com>...
> > > Certainly "=" is better than ":=" for assignment, but if you don't
> > 
> > In what way?
> > 
> > Logically, its not better. The symbol comes from math, where it
> > designates an invariant equality of values, not a moving of values
> > from one temporary storage place to another. 

I strongly agree with that sentiment.  Any programming language designer
who throws away hundreds of years of perfectly good maths notation is
being arrogant, obnoxious, rude, and evil.  ;-)

Some languages use "integer" to mean a small subset of the integers, and
"real" to mean an even smaller subset of the real numbers.  That's also
arrogant, etc, in my opinion.  (Ada is guilty of only one of these
sins.)

>...All I
> am saying is that I prefer "=" and I think many others would too.
> Can't we all just get along?

No, we can't.  Programs are for communicating among people.  (If they
were for communicating to machines, we would use machine language!)  If
you use "=" and I use ":=" then we will have a harder time understanding
each other's programs.

- Bob