billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (03/18/90)
From eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus): > My current guess (not my preferences, just a guess as to what > will happen) is that the first revision will be a very minor one, with > the largest changes being things like replacing ASCII with Latin-1, > allowing literals from other character sets, unsigned types (but not > as predefined integer types), dynamic prioities, and better support > for entry families. The following revison can deal with evolution. What would be the rationale for deferring evolution another 5 years? It seems to me that it is at least as important to modernize software technology as it is to modernize hardware technology (e.g., aircraft)! The area in which object-orientation will provide the maximum payoff, that of management information systems, is of particular importance to the DoD right now -- witness the spare parts scandals! Therefore I consider it especially important that object-orientation be addressed. > There may be some extensions to make OOP easier, but don't expect > much in the way of changes. Just the ability to do what you can do > already in a much more elegant way. (Which is a lot. The only major > feature not directly supported in Ada is multiple inheritance, and > overload resolution makes that a big can of worms.) As I mentioned in an earlier article, there is recent work in the area of combining types, inheritance, and prototyping (one reference being "Object Specialization", ACM Transactions on Information Systems, April 1989; I am in the process of investigating others) which basically eliminates both the need and the desire for multiple inheritance. Though this particular paper isn't easy reading (it helps a LOT to translate the Smalltalk notation into a more Ada-like notation), the ideas in it seem to be both analytically and intuitively quite strongly appealing. With minor adjustments, these mechanisms could fit right into Ada very nicely!! Five years from now is plenty of time to get an extremely strong proposal together. If Ada *will* be open to such a change in five years, then it will find itself very well-positioned to enter the next century. But what about the five years between now and then? Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu
eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (03/22/90)
In article <8423@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) writes: > From eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus): > > My current guess (not my preferences, just a guess as to what > > will happen) is that the first revision will be a very minor one... > What would be the rationale for deferring evolution another 5 years? Gee, I thought I said that this is what I think will happen, not what I want. Our town did some things at last week's town meeting that I didn't like (and some that I did). I could usually call the vote well before it occured, but in many cases the votes were strongly influenced by people's attitude toward those who were the principal spokespeople for either side rather than any feature of the proposal itself. The same thing seems to be happening on Ada 9X. There is a groundswell developing to fix a few small things NOW, and leave the rest til later. (Of course, not everybody agrees on the "few small things." :-) > It seems to me that it is at least as important to modernize software > technology as it is to modernize hardware technology (e.g., aircraft)! No disagreement. > Five years from now is plenty of time to get an extremely strong > proposal together. If Ada *will* be open to such a change in > five years, then it will find itself very well-positioned to > enter the next century. But what about the five years between > now and then? It will probably take five years to get a good proposal together. I also think that that is a minimum time to study some of these issues and come up with something that mixes cleanly with the existing language. So by all means, start now, I started last year. :-) -- Robert I. Eachus with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Bill Wolfe) (03/23/90)
eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: > in many cases the votes were strongly > influenced by people's attitude toward those who were the principal > spokespeople for either side rather than any feature of the proposal > itself. The same thing seems to be happening on Ada 9X. I hope that the 9X process will be sufficiently open to ensure that all proposals will be considered on their own merits -- this sounds a lot like the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. > It will probably take five years to get a good proposal > together. I also think that that is a minimum time to study some of > these issues and come up with something that mixes cleanly with the > existing language. So by all means, start now, I started last year. :-) In that case, we should organize into a working group to consider the issues together rather than inefficiently duplicating our individual efforts. Probably the best way to do that would be to form an ACM SIGAda Working Group. I will take the first step: forming a list of potential members. If you, the reader, are interested in participating in a potential ACM SIGAda Object-Oriented Working Group, please modify the following prototype response as appropriate and E-mail it back: ------------------------ Prototype... Cut Here --------------------- ACM SIGAda Object-Oriented Working Group Your Name: William T. Wolfe Member ACM? Yes E-mail: wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu Member SIGAda? Yes Snailmail: Department of Computer Science Clemson University Clemson, SC 29634-1906 USA ------------------------ Prototype... Cut Here --------------------- Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu