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: 103376,42490cad53ee37fa X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!newscon02.news.prodigy.com!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada? Date: 16 Mar 2005 15:18:31 -0500 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01-e.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: pcls4.std.com 1111004311 24578 69.38.147.31 (16 Mar 2005 20:18:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:18:31 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9517 Date: 2005-03-16T15:18:31-05:00 List-Id: writes: > "Jared" wrote in message > news:S39Zd.1389$fO6.3528@news.uswest.net... > > > > Java, as has been pointed out elsewhere on this > group, is basically C++ > > with all the bad parts removed and with garbage > collection added. Java is > > comfortable to all the C people, because of its > syntax, because of its > > culture, and because it pretends to share the > C++ idioms. > > > A strange argument, but a common one. > > Ada's syntax is not less comfortable than the > syntax of the C family. In fact, > I find the C family syntax rather annoying, not > particularly intuitive, and full > of contradictions and work-arounds. Richard, I think you misunderstand Jared's point. He's not saying Java syntax is "better" -- he's saying it's comfortable to folks used to C syntax. That seems quite likely true. If you're a C programmer, you're used to seeing lots of curly braces all over, and you're used to declaring variables by putting the type name first (int X instead of X: int). Switching to Java is then comfortable. Switching to Ada is not -- you have to get used to "end if" instead of "}" and so forth. I think that's a big part of the reason Java is so popular -- it gives a comfortable syntax, plus garbage collection, no confusion between arrays and pointers, etc. I happen to be comfortable with Ada syntax, so I find "int X" bass ackwards. (But then I also find "package X" backwards; it should be "X: package". The most important thing about a declaration (its name) should come first. Then what sort of thing it is. Then more details.) - Bob