Re: Why .ads as well as .adb?

[Optikos <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Monday, June 10, 2019 at 5:07:41 PM UTC-5, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Maciej Sobczak" <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:bab5af5d-a3d7-412d-b3c9-1e573e2dd467@googlegroups.com...
> > No, you are proving that you refuse to comprehend my actual point: that
> > source file organization is irrelevant (except maybe to compilers).
> 
> Then why people are defending separate spec files so hard?
> 
> >> You've
> >> never once said a word about the important point: reducing coupling.
> 
> >On the contrary. I have pointed that spec and implementations are coupled 
> >so much
> 
> Of course they're coupled, they're views of the same thing (just like 
> private types and full types are views of the same thing).
> 
> I was referrring to coupling *between* units. The specification of a unit 
> typically depends only on a small number of other units (sometimes even 
> none), while the implementation typically depends on many more 
> (language-defined packages, implementation helpers, etc.). That's the 
> coupling I'm worrying about, as it matters in a number of ways.
> 
> >> At this point, it appears that you are mainly trolling,
> 
> >Or maybe you are just running out of arguments.
> 
> Which would appear to be the same. :-) Since you belittle or ignore any 
> serious argument, there's really no possibility of continuing. (It's OK to 
> disagree, it's not OK to ignore all or [as in the case above], twist 
> someone's discussion point into something unrecognizable.
> 
> 
> >What I don't accept is the religious attitude that Ada is the only language
> > that got the software engineering right and (consequently) that everything
> >else is broken.
> 
> The truth hurts. So far as I can tell, no other language has really tried to 
> "get software engineering right".

There was only one other programming language that tried to “get software engineering right” and that achieved significant industrial usage and an open-source GCC compiler and that was ISO standardized:  CHILL.  While DoD & NATO were busy with their HOLWG effort for the military, ITU-T (in the United Nations) launched a somewhat competing effort for telecom in the EU (and AT&T steadfastly rejected both for the most part except for some monitoring of the 2 other efforts, so that AT&T pushed forward with C).

As can be seen in the following example CHILL source code, if Ada was envisioned as a Pascal/Wirth-esque-family language, CHILL was envisioned as a PL/1esque-family language.  As such, Ada is beautiful & refined by comparison, whereas CHILL is rather abrupt & uncouth, as if it is most at home on an IBM mainframe with its fellow brethren CICS and JCL and of course PL/I.  CHILL and Ada share many of the same goals and as such have some analogous language features that are absent in most other programming languages.  Except for some maintenance of CHILL-based telecom equipment from Alcatel and Siemens, CHILL has become a dead language.
http://psc.informatik.uni-jena.de/languages/chill/chill.htm

> It's possible, of course, but everyone 
> either is trying to graft engineering onto some preexisting base without it 
> (C++, Java) or is building something that's more about fast construction 
> than engineering (Python).

I concur.  And the grafting on is not very aggressive at all.  It is as if the other languages that dip a toe into software-engineering principles are merely paying lip service to the topic.