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=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,TO_NO_BRKTS_FROM_MSSP autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,bc1361a952ec75ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-31 08:32:53 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!feed.textport.net!newsranger.com!www.newsranger.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Ted Dennison References: <3B6555ED.9B0B0420@sneakemail.com> <9ff447f2.0107301653.c8f5e94@posting.google.com> <3B6624E6.DF734E5C@sneakemail.com> <3b66520b@pull.gecm.com> Subject: Re: How to make Ada a dominant language Message-ID: X-Abuse-Info: When contacting newsranger.com regarding abuse please X-Abuse-Info: forward the entire news article including headers or X-Abuse-Info: else we will not be able to process your request X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsranger.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:32:45 EDT Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:32:45 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:10870 Date: 2001-07-31T15:32:45+00:00 List-Id: In article <3b66520b@pull.gecm.com>, Martin Dowie says... > >Russ Paielli <18k11tm001@sneakemail.com> wrote in message >news:3B6624E6.DF734E5C@sneakemail.com... >> But "x = 4" means that, immediately after the statement is executed, x >> indeed equals 4. I don't see a problem with using "=" for both > >so what does "X = X + 1" mean? This was part of the reason >why ":=" has been used in many languages (before Ada was ever >conceived). This isn't an issue to gloss over either. It causes serious problems with people who have a good foundation in math, but are just learning programming. The fact of the matter is that an assignment is *not* a statement of assertion of equality, as one would normally see "=" used for in any mathematical text. It is a statement of a single replacement of value (often denoted with a left-pointing arrow in math texts). Unless we can convince mathematicians to change the symbol that they have been using for assertions of equality for the last 1000 years or so (good luck over in sci.math on that one!), to aviod confusion we should probably use it in our programming languages for the same purpose, and not for other purposes (like assignment). Note that Ada was perhaps the most carefully designed programming language ever. Just about everything in the language has a good reason for the way it is, and most of these reasons have been widely published. Thus any attempt to claim that Ada syntax is somehow badly-thought out is quite liable to find you on the wrong end of quite a lot of reasearch. C, for all its good qualities, was just not carefully designed. You may be able to think up rationales to convince yourself that C's syntax is better in some circumstances. But if you try to seriously argue them *here*, you are bringing a knife to a gunfight. :-) It is true that the syntax is not C's, and that may be a Bad Thing to those used to C (and no other style of syntax), but that's pretty much where the complaint has to stop. --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com