Re: Why .ads as well as .adb?

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

> > This style is promoted by all industrial coding standards (both
> > C and C++ language standards examples, MISRA-C, JSF, HICPP, AUTOSAR,
> > ...), so I don't get the argument about "rarity".
> >
> > Actually, I don't even know where to find something different.
> 
> The two most common layouts for C code are:
[...]

Of course. But as pointed above, the vertically-aligned braces are promoted by all industrial coding standards and are used in code examples of the language standards themselves. And I see them in classic books. And I see them in major open source code bases.
Hence my comment about the argument that "most" C code is smushed together. I just don't see that. (But I know Java coders who, when forced to put their dignity aside, would actually write C code this way.)

In either case (in both styles) the argument that "Ada's comb" is superior is just not convincing. Which might explain why every new programming language either adopts C-style braces or resigns from distinct bracketing altogether. The subsequent argument that the whole world is idiots would not be convincing, either - this apparently is an inherent property of our visual system that delimiters need be visible enough to be noticed, but should not dominate over the actual (delimited) content.

Note: sentences are delimited by dots. Just like the sentence you are reading right now. And parts are delimited by commas, just like, you know, the parts of this very sentence.
And it worked for ages. And we are used to it so much that we would refuse anything different.

Why?

Because our very brains are wired exactly to expect that.

Do you think it would be better to have delimiters and separators that areQWERTY you knowQWERTY so bigQWERTY that they take significant part of the spaceQWERTY with huge terminatorsQWERTY tooQWERTY so that we can see them betterASDFGHJ?

I don't think soASDFGHJ.

;-)

-- 
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com