franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (02/01/86)
John Goodenough has noted in his survey that the use of the => operator tends to cause problems for those who are new to Ada. This is accompanied by a perception that it is used differently in different contexts. I believe this perception is incorrect; the use of the symbol is completely uniform. In general, its use in the form <name> => <value>. Why, then, do people have so much trouble with it? (And I had trouble with it, too, when I first encountered it.) The answer, I maintain, is because the symbol looks like an arrow, and that arrow points in the wrong direction. An arrow looks like an assignment, and we assign values to names, not vice versa. Since <= is not available, I think a direction neutral symbol, perhaps ==, would have been a better choice. It is perhaps too late to make this change now; on the other hand, perhaps later versions of the language could support it as an alternative. Frank Adams ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
cb@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (Christopher Byrnes) (02/08/86)
I'm not sure that the use of a `==' operator in place of the `=>' is going to solve the problem. As a "C" language programmer, I might recognize the `==' operator as the logical equality operator. I'm not sure what other languages have used `==' for. Ada's use of `=>' (for named parameter association, etc.) is sufficiently different from what most other computer languages provide that it deserves a "different" operator. Once a programmer gets use to the concept, they shouldn't mind which way the "arrow" is pointing. Christopher Byrnes The MITRE Corporation Burlington Road M. S. A425 Bedford, Mass. 01730 cb@Mitre-Bedford.ARPA ...decvax!linus!bccvax!cb.UUCP