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Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

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Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#151

Post by noahbp »

twoodfin wrote: post #149
hackrmn wrote: post #136

I find multiple "strange" flaws with the article, even for my appreciation of Ada _and_ the article as an essay: * The article claims only Ada has true separation of implementation vs specification (the interface), but as far as I am able to reason, also e.g. JavaScript is perfectly able to define "private" elements (not exported by an ES6 module) while being usable in the module that declares them -- if this isn't "…

LLMs are weaponized Gell-Mann amnesia when it comes to writing for humans.

Unfortunately, you're right. It is LLM-written: https://www.pangram.com/history/8b17aa57-ce1f-4f46-85f4-4db0...

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#152

Post by ako »

jll29 wrote: post #106
sehugg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder what "Turbo Ada" would have looked like, but I think it would have probably looked like later versions of Borland Pascal. Things like generics and exceptions would have taken some of the "turbo" out of the compiler and runtime -- the code generator didn't even get a non-peephole optimizer until 32-bit Delphi, it would have been too slow. It might be nice to have Ada's tasks driven by DOS interrupts…

I have not seen it, but there is something close to what you ask about: Turbo Modula-2 (an implementation of MODULA-2 written by Martin Odersky), as both MODULA-2 and PASCAL were Niklaus Wirth-invented languages that looks very similar to Ada: "Shortly before we finished our compiler, Borland came out with Turbo Pascal, and they were considering going into the Modula-2 market as well. In fact, Borland decided to buy…

I think Oracle PlSQL was also based on Ada, basically Ada + SQL embedded. So it may be the widest used version of "Ada".

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#153

Post by hackrmn »

ragall wrote: post #150
hackrmn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* only if `x` is _an object_ (read: has methods) To preempt the obvious: yes, I know _everything_ (nearly) in JavaScript is an object, but a module exporting a `Function` can expect the caller to use the function, not enumerate it for methods. And the function can use a declaration in the module that wasn't exported, with the caller none the wiser about it.

To expect is different from it being impossible.

Can't argue with that.

But in defence of JavaScript -- since it enjoys routine bashing, not always undeserved -- it now has true runtime-enforced private members (the syntax is prefixing the name with `#`, strictly as part of an ES6 class declaration), but yeah -- this doesn't invalidate the statement "kind of got there 32 years after Ada, stumbling over itself".

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#154

Post by twoodfin »

noahbp wrote: post #151
twoodfin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are weaponized Gell-Mann amnesia when it comes to writing for humans.

Unfortunately, you're right. It is LLM-written: https://www.pangram.com/history/8b17aa57-ce1f-4f46-85f4-4db0...

I don’t need a tool to tell me that, and if it was a well-written, interesting, accurate essay, I wouldn’t care.

But it’s none of those three things.

It is, however, the result of a model trained very effectively to give humans—including hn readers—what they want.

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#155

Post by twoodfin »

ako wrote: post #152
jll29 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not seen it, but there is something close to what you ask about: Turbo Modula-2 (an implementation of MODULA-2 written by Martin Odersky), as both MODULA-2 and PASCAL were Niklaus Wirth-invented languages that looks very similar to Ada: "Shortly before we finished our compiler, Borland came out with Turbo Pascal, and they were considering going into the Modula-2 market as well. In fact, Borland decided to buy…

I think Oracle PlSQL was also based on Ada, basically Ada + SQL embedded. So it may be the widest used version of "Ada".

Wow, that’s a factoid I’d love to learn more about!

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#156

Post by cestith »

I like Ada. I can’t believe this whole discussion about how types are handled missed the entire ML family of languages. ML, Standard ML, Concurrent ML, Caml, OCaml, and more have structural types, supported and enforced by the compiler.

Ada has one of the same primary issues as PL/I, PHP, and Perl. As much as one might like it, it’s a huge language with loads of syntax and semantics baked into the core language. The article keeps saying that’s a selling point. To some extent and to some people that’s true. However, it also touts the annexes as something wonderful. That’s also true, and more true in my opinion. If only more of the language had been in standardized annexes with a smaller core it may have seen far more adoption.

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#157

Post by phicoh »

donatj wrote: post #41

I like the article overall but the continually repeated 'Language X didn't have that until ' is very grating after the first ten or so. I also wish there were concrete code examples. Show me what you are talking about rather than just telling me how great it is. Put some side by side comparisons!

I agree. There are quite a few places where they author claims that Ada had a concept first and some language got the same concept later, but the two concepts are different enough that examples would help to show where they are similar.

Especially if we assume that most readers are not Ada experts and that enough languages are mentioned that most people don't know the details of all of them.

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#158

Post by sidewndr46 »

cubix wrote: post #104
sidewndr46 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to take some course that was something like "Programming Language Theory". As a result I had to look at the specifications for dozens of different programming languages. I remember looking at the features of some languages and scratching my head trying to figure out how some of this would ever be practically implemented by a compiler. Later on I found out lots of stuff is just implemented by a runtime anyways,…

I took a course exactly like that. I wonder if we went to the same school, or it’s due to curriculum standardization. The professor was particularly enthusiastic about Ada, so I had assumed the course was largely his creation.

the accreditation was through ABET at the time from what I recall

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#159

Post by phicoh »

YesThatTom2 wrote: post #39

Ada was also ignored because the typical compiler cost tens of thousands of dollars. No open source or free compiler existed during the decades where popular languages could be had for free. I think that is the biggest factor of all.

The article gives another reason "A second answer is aesthetic. Ada's syntax is verbose in a way that programmers with a background in C find unpleasant. if X then Y; end if; instead of if (x) { y; }. procedure Sort (A : in out Array_Type) instead of void sort(int* a)."

I think this should not be underestimated. There is a huge number of small C compilers. People write their own C compiler because they want to have one.

That doesn't happen we Ada. Very few people liked Ada enough that they would write a compiler for a subset of the language. For example, an Ada subset similar to the feature set of Modula-2 should be quite doable with a modest effort.

Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages

#160

Post by ako »

twoodfin wrote: post #155
ako wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Oracle PlSQL was also based on Ada, basically Ada + SQL embedded. So it may be the widest used version of "Ada".

Wow, that’s a factoid I’d love to learn more about!

https://oracle-internals.com/blog/2020/04/29/a-not-so-brief-...
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