Introduction to Ada • Hacker News Board

Re: Introduction to Ada

#11

Post by _8j50 » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #6

Petty and inconsequential as this sounds, I'm convinced Ada go have gone farther if it didn't have capitals and underscores in all their libs, and long keywords like `procedure`. All that shift-key action makes Ada a physically painful language to work in.

people had similar complaints about python and all the space/tab/indentation. I like to think it was not aesthetically pleasing but also, it was way ahead of it's time. If Rust was released in '95 it may not have been received as well.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#12

Post by khazhoux » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

synack wrote: post #10

khazhoux wrote: post #6

Petty and inconsequential as this sounds, I'm convinced Ada go have gone farther if it didn't have capitals and underscores in all their libs, and long keywords like `procedure`. All that shift-key action makes Ada a physically painful language to work in.

One of the "Steelman" requirements that Ada was built to satisfy was that any program should be able to be represented with a subset of ASCII that would be compatible with the largest range of terminals, teletypes, and punched cards as possible. Less relevant today, but that's why Ada has so many keywords in it's syntax.

Just found this:

https://blog.adacore.com/a-modern-syntax-for-ada

Re: Introduction to Ada

#13

Post by synack » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:44 AM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #12

synack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the "Steelman" requirements that Ada was built to satisfy was that any program should be able to be represented with a subset of ASCII that would be compatible with the largest range of terminals, teletypes, and punched cards as possible. Less relevant today, but that's why Ada has so many keywords in it's syntax.

Just found this: https://blog.adacore.com/a-modern-syntax-for-ada

That was an April Fools' joke.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#14

Post by khazhoux » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:47 AM UTC

synack wrote: post #13

khazhoux wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just found this: https://blog.adacore.com/a-modern-syntax-for-ada

That was an April Fools' joke.

Ha, that's what I get for posting stuff without reading it.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#15

Post by johnisgood » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #6

Petty and inconsequential as this sounds, I'm convinced Ada go have gone farther if it didn't have capitals and underscores in all their libs, and long keywords like `procedure`. All that shift-key action makes Ada a physically painful language to work in.

Rust seems to flourish despite its heavy use of symbols, and I mean... heavy. Plus, code is supposed to be documentation. :)

Re: Introduction to Ada

#16

Post by non-entity » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

I've been intrigued by Ada for some years, but never really dived into it too much. I dont mind the language, but the tooling always seemed weird to me and it feels like any real world use of the language seems like its been relegated to legacy maintenance. Most of the time if I see Ada in a job description, it makes it seems like its something that's nice to know because there's a sliver of a chance you might have to rewrite or modify it, but majority of work will be done in something like C++, which is a shame.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#17

Post by johnisgood » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

My comments on Ada: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23808305

Re: Introduction to Ada

#18

Post by non-entity » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

TedDallas wrote: post #2

Nice documentation. Ada looks a lot like Pascal. It is interesting that SPARK is a subset of subset of Ada.

Pascal-like syntax seemed to have been popular around the time. Outside the Writh languages(Pascal, Modula, Oberon) and Ada, I was reading about CHILL[0] the other day, which is supposedly similar to Ada, but was rather domain specific. Sadly I don't think any modern, free implementations exist.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHILL

Re: Introduction to Ada

#19

Post by Jtsummers » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #6

Petty and inconsequential as this sounds, I'm convinced Ada go have gone farther if it didn't have capitals and underscores in all their libs, and long keywords like `procedure`. All that shift-key action makes Ada a physically painful language to work in.

Ada is actually case insensitive. The uppercase isn’t strictly necessary, more convention.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#20

Post by non-entity » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

Ice_cream_suit wrote: post #4

Their marketing folks should introduce Ada certification. Many developers would jump through hoops to get any dodgy certification. I have seen dubious FEMA certifications and NFA certifications on some LinkedIn pages.

The domains Ada is used in are probably some of the few that would care about some certification too.