Re: Ada9X Features

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <9408127793.AA779382777@smtpgw.fnoc.navy.mil>,
Michael Hagerty  <mhagerty@FNOC.NAVY.MIL> wrote:
>On Sun, 11 Sep 1994, Michael Feldman <mfeldman@SEAS.GWU.EDU> wrote:
>
>MF> This discussion of "creeping featurism" in Ada 9X points up just
>  > how difficult a consensus process is. Everyone says "this language
>  > is getting too big; we don't need all this junk; leave _my_
>  > favorite stuff in, please."
>
>Much, much, much horse trading goes on in building a consensus on a
>standards committee.  I recall one instance on the Pascal committee
>where, in order to get the set extensions I so dearly wanted, I went
>along with adding complex numbers...  Even then, set complement was
>whacked way down when the rest of the committee guessed what was
>required in generating the complement of the null set!  Shucks...

Good anecdote. I was not on the Pascal committee but followed some of the 
discussions. I recall that the standard-making process stalled for some
time on the issue of "conformant array parameters", a seemingly obvious
idea in which array parameters to subprograms conform to the bounds of
the actual parameter (sort of a half-way "unconstrained array type paramter"
to use Ada's terms). This seemed natural to many, especially since
Fortran had it for years.

After all that, there are _two_ Pascal standards, one adopted by ISO
which includes conformant array parameters, and one adopted by ANSI,
which is the ISO one _minus_ conformant array parameters. The story
going around was that the US compiler vendors kept it out of the US 
standard.

And Pascal is a pretty simple language.:-)

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
NOTE NEW PHONE NUMBER.
"Pork is all that stuff the government gives the other guys."
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