Re: Ada generics

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:45:27 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 14:51 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> I find "вода" far more descriptive! (:-))
> 
> I wouldn't hesitate to write "вода" in a Russian only program.

Ah, but then you are in a big trouble, because "вода", "воде", "водой",
"воды", "водами", "водах" would all be equivalent in terms of what they
describe, i.e. "water", "lack of content", "confusion making", "being
ignorant", "alcohol drink", "time passed", "equivalence", "being down"?
Should Ada compilers learn Russian inflection rules?

The idea that programs should look like COBOL is just wrong.

>> Natural language words (even pictographs)
>> describe absolutely nothing but themselves. 
> 
> (How can you be certain of this? :-)

As a proof consider a human being who does not know written Russian.

>>> Programming problems cannot reasonably described in full
>>> using only formal symbolism.
>> 
>> So what?
> 
> It means a programming language should enable its users to choose
> good names. To me, this means reasonable flexibility in the choice
> of identifiers. We are not yet used to writing π in a geometry program
> even though it is an obvious choice for all involved. A few decades
> ago, People weren't expecting to be able to write A := {1, 3 .. 15}
> when using SETL. They instead had to revert to trigraphs for the
> braces and such, IIRC. This has changed. So maybe some day Ada
> programmers will be fine with Greek π in geometry programs,
> and use ω occasionally, for local variables that have to do with
> spinning things.

And run into mess. Can you tell me what is what without resorting to a
binary editor in the following:

К, K, Κ, Қ

>> The language treats *any* names
>> equally. Any application domain meaning of names is outside the language.
> 
> I don't think application domain names can be chosen properly if
> you won't let application domains influence language design,
> including identifier spelling rules (in say 5% of future
> programs if Randy's estimates will turn out to be true).

But you have no chance to achieve that. How are you support identifiers
like "man-eating," (not to be mixed with "man eating")?

>>>> Simplicity of implementation does not justify doing wrong things! (:-))
>>> 
>>> Indeed, this is why I like to be able to write identifiers
>>> that are written correctly,
>> 
>> Mathematicians use much less descriptive identifies being absolutely free
>> to use Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets. Yet nobody even tried to use full
>> words. Why?
> 
> Mathematicians use full words almost all the time when they
> explain their reasoning to human readers. 
> 
> echo "Let I ⊂ N be a finite index set. For all k ∈ I, P(k)." | wc
>       1      15      58

Huh, none of these words is an *identifier*! They just don't use
descriptive identifiers, neither for free variables, nor for functions.

> How many math books or papers are there that use a more terse
> mode of expression?
> 
>> Yet another "German" rule: "a_b" = "ab"? In that spirit, what about
>> middle-endian integer literals and postfix forms for all function calls?
>> (:-))
> 
> These are not character set and casing issues, and you know it. :-)

But ss = ß wasn't either!

BTW, nobody answered if "іf" and "аccess" were legal Ada 2005 identifiers.
Are they?

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de