[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/19/2018 3:09 PM, gérard Calliet wrote:
> Le 19/12/2018 à 20:43, Arne Vajhøj a écrit :
>> On 12/19/2018 2:39 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> On 12/19/18 2:25 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> There are two schools of thought on programming languages.
>>>>
>>>> There are those that prioritize the power of the language - it
>>>> should be possible to express even very complex logic in a
>>>> short and concise way.
>>>>
>>>> And there are those that prioritize simplicity of the
>>>> language - it should be possible for anybody with an
>>>> IQ over 90 to read and understand the code.
>>>>
>>>> Ada95 and Scala definitely seems to be designed
>>>> by people in the first category.
>>>
>>> I don't know about that.  Ada w3as used as an introductory
>>> language at Universities and that was back when the average
>>> incoming student hadn't seen a computer more advanced than
>>> a TRS-80 or Apple ][.  They had no problem grasping it and
>>> by their second year were writing rather complex programs
>>> with it.
>>
>> Ada95 or Ada83 ?

> Somethings very subtle can be used in Ada 83, 95, 2012 (2012 introduced 
> the idea of contracts, first saw in Eiffel long time ago, and very 
> powerfull), but I have to agree with Bill, Ada is also well structured 
> and has been used on education, because, being not at all ambiguous it 
> can be used to make believe students that programs have to do 
> predictable actions :) , and using small simple parts of the langage is 
> possible for all IQ :)
> 
> Me best lesson in programming has been a year with first part in Caml 
> (functional) "doing the most rational thing" said the teacher, and the 
> second part in Ada "you can translate that to simpler procedural simple 
> language" said her.
> 
> The similarity between Scala and Ada, for me, and thought there are 
> totally different way of programming, is that they suppose a scientific 
> basis, and so it is possible to think programming more as a rational 
> action than  a probalistic action.
> 
> A subset of Ada, Spark, is used as a tool in formal proofs of programs. 
> Which indicates Ada is in the universe of predictable programming.

I know that the "use of a subset of Ada" approach is sometimes used
but I see that as an indication that the full language may be
too complex for some contexts.

Arne