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=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!peer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad.highwinds-media.com!fx09.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Shark8 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.0a1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Your wish list for Ada 202X References: <7f1c01c5-3563-4b94-9831-152dbbf2ecdc@googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: X-Complaints-To: abuse@teranews.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 08:18:37 UTC Organization: TeraNews.com Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 02:20:31 -0700 X-Received-Bytes: 3100 X-Received-Body-CRC: 470750898 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:18996 Date: 2014-03-27T02:20:31-07:00 List-Id: On 26-Mar-14 13:41, Randy Brukardt wrote: > "Shark8" wrote in message > news:tvtYu.83108$tD4.27538@fx25.iad... >> On 25-Mar-14 14:41, Stoik wrote: >>> I think that even a casual user of Ada should be able to influence >>> somehow the new >>> version of Ada. I wonder what is high on your list of wishes for Ada >>> 202X? > ... >> (1) >> I think we should look at simplifying the standard packages. >> >> Consider also the [[wide_]wide_]string packages and the relationship to >> [[wide_]wide_]character -- it would be very nice (as well as aiding >> maintainability) to have the *_String [and character-handling] packages be >> generics instantiated on the proper Character type. > > I agree that this is an area that needs looking at, but I don't think using > more generics will provide anything useable. The problem, as Dmitry likes to > say, is that the representation and semantics of a string are intertwined, > and those have to be separated in order to make a sensible string type > system. Hm, not even with the new incomplete-type allowances for generics? Perhaps a "abstract interface" / "abstract type" could be made where, you can sever the representation and semantics? > I've played with some ideas based on an abstract Root_String'Class, and > pretty much everything necessary can be done with existing Ada 2012 > features, and the few things that can't have a fairly obvious language > feature that could be defined to provide them (for instance, a mechanism to > support string literals). Hm, Really? Care to share your findings? > I think the problem is mainly going to be political rather than technical. > The solution requires defining a large set of new packages that echo > functionality already in the language, and that would not be used by the > sorts of safety-critical applications that the paying customers use. > (They're not using Text_IO or Unbounded_Strings or Directories or ...). > That's going to make changes in this area a tough sell, I fear. Hope I'm > wrong. That's rather sad; I'd hope for Ada to be a technically superior language -- IMO, it already is in several respects... but that's no reason to slack off and not strive for higher quality. ------------ Any comment on idea #2 or #3?