Re: Is Ada the future? [was: Is C++ the future?]

[mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel)]

John Volan (jgv@swl.msd.ray.com) wrote:
: The reason decoupled mutual recursion is *somewhat* harder in Ada has
: to do with broader decisions that pervade the design of the language,
: relating to modularity, encapsulation, separate compilation, scope,
: visibility, and so forth.

Specifically what are these decisions?  As far as I can tell, 
you could allow mutual dependency with no other change to the
language except saying "it is now allowed", and let the compiler
do The Right Thing that it should have done to begin with.

Why doesn't it?

: Well, would it help if some of us "Ada Amigoids" did the following: 

: (1) Honestly raise a technical issue wherever Ada appears to be weak.

: (2) Face that issue squarely and with dogged persistence, refusing to
: be satisfied by "solutions" that merely avoid the problem or
: trivialize it, rather than actually solving it.

Exactly.  Solve the problem.  

The core issue:  doing this should be possible.  (Indeed it
was hard for me to imagine that it should ever have been
not possible).

-- Obvious Eiffel construction.
class ONE is
 	a:TWO;
end;

class TWO is
	b:ONE;
end;


: -- John Volan

--
-Matt Kennel  		mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu
-Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego
-*** AD: Archive for nonlinear dynamics papers & programs: FTP to
-***     lyapunov.ucsd.edu, username "anonymous".