Structure Comparison (ADA vs C) - (nf)

[andree at uokvax.UUCP]

#R:taurus:-8000:uokvax:3000001:000:873
uokvax!andree    Oct 14 13:01:00 1983

As Mike said, it is true that ADA(tm) solves many of the problems of C. But
the same thing works in reverse - ADA has problems that were solved in C
(and FORTRAN, for that matter), like the nested environment/scope definition
kludgery. One of the members of the ADA design team (whose name escapes me)
was quoted as saying `with packages, nesting is for the birds.' I agree
completely.

Unfortunately, Pascal seems to have imbued the world with the idea that nesting
is, and will remain, good (this could be due to new languages being based
on Pascal, rather than some unnested language). Thus, modern languages
(Modula *, * Euclid, Ada, etc.) tend to have nesting. The only exception
I am aware of is CLU. If you haven't seen the CLU manual, you may want
to take a look. They present some interesting (and effective) solutions
to many standard PL design problems.

	<mike