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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 21:55:18 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Re: Ada's ranking of popularity at IEEE Spectrum
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Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:187513
Date: 2014-07-10T21:55:18-07:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On Thursday, July 10, 2014 2:30:03 PM UTC-4, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> On 7/10/2014 1:18 PM, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>=20
>=20
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> >
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> > One thing that can be done is concentrate on things that are unique
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> > or done much better in Ada.
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> Also things that can be done in more clear way. I like browsing
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> http://rosettacode.org sometimes and compare how different languages
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> do somethings. For example, looking at
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> http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Address_of_a_variable
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> "Demonstrate how to get the address of a variable and how to set the addr=
ess of a variable"
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> Ada way:
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> ----------
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> The_Address : System.Address;
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> I : Integer;
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> The_Address :=3D I'Address;     -- read
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> for I'Address use 16#A100#;  --- set
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> --------------------
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> C++ way:
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> -----------
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> int i;
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> void* address_of_i =3D &i;
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> "While C++ doesn't directly support putting a variable
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> at a given address, the same effect can be achieved by
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> creating a reference to that address: "
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> int& i =3D *(int*)0xA100;
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> ----------------------
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> Anyone looking at the above 2 examples, can see that Ada is much
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> more clear. Actually anyone who does not even know Ada can
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> understand what the code does. Try that with the C++ version!
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> --Nasser

I agree with the sentiment of promoting Ada's unique elements. For example,=
 discriminate records and the typing system are unrivaled and the like. How=
ever, there are still many long standing problems that draw people away:

* Why are record discriminates only limited to discrete types?
* Why can't I use the regular string notation for unbounded_string types?
* Why am I required to have msys/unix configure to use standard and basic p=
ackages? It could just be my UNIX illiteracy, but I could not get GNATColl =
to work under windows after a day and decided to just write my own hacked J=
SON parser instead and gave up on connecting to databases...