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> "Pretty frustrating. I do not have to learn Ada to know what the code does" That seems unlikely, or anyone - even if they hadn't learned to program ever - wo

> "Pretty frustrating. I do not have to learn Ada to know what the code does" That seems unlikely, or anyone - even if they hadn't learned to program ever - would be able to read Ada. More likely that a) you've already learned enough to cover Ada by learning other programming languages or b) you assume you know what the Ada code does but are incorrect. Let's charitably go with a) then what you're implicitly supporting is that "all languages must look and behave the same, and there's no possible benefit in a language being different enough that it requires me to learn something new". And therefore that the lowest-common-denominator intersection of all popular languages combined is also the pinnacle of language design. Something which seems unlikely.

johnisgood 6y ago
I am referring to the explicitness of the code. What the code does is not hidden behind symbols, for example. I probably have learnt enough to cover Ada by learning other programming languages, but it somehow does not apply to reading Rust vs. reading Ada, is what I meant. Of course you do have to follow some guidelines to make the code even more readable, but still. For me, without knowing Ada and Rust, Ada is way much easier to understand. Ada was designed with maintainability and readability in mind, and I think it shows, at least according to my experience. People have written stuff like "I see Ada as a verbose language, however, unlike say Java, the verbosity actually benefits readability.". I find it to be true. Perhaps you could compare some Ada code (something from AdaCore (GNAT, GNATColl)) with the Rust equivalent.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "For me, without knowing Ada and Rust, Ada is way much easier to understand." If you don't know Ada then you don't /know/ that you understand it, you're assuming you do - and if you do that's because it looks like languages you already know. And if that's what you're saying is good about it, then what you're saying is "things I know are good". You're seeing "Ada looks familiar" and saying "Ada has good design" as if those are the same thing. You only need to look at some beginner programming discussions to see that block-structured, scoped, procedural, looped, branched, etc. features are not things people are born understanding - that you know them already and Ada has them is convenient for you. > "What the code does is not hidden behind symbols, for example." I looked at the Wikipedia page, it has equals, colon-equals, slash-equals, greater-than, less-than, apostrophe, parentheses, ampersand, double-quotes, equals-greater-than which seems to be an arrow not a comparison, double-dots, and of course "when" "is" "protected" etc. they're as much symbols as they are words. > "Ada and Rust, Ada is way much easier to understand" I'll quote Erik Naggum from an old comp.lang.lisp(?) comment: "When I work at this system up to 12 hours a day, I'm profoundly uninterested in what user interface a novice user would prefer.".

johnisgood 6y ago

I am referring to the explicitness of the code. What the code does is not hidden behind symbols, for example. I probably have learnt enough to cover Ada by learning other programming languages, but it somehow does not apply to reading Rust vs. reading Ada, is what I meant. Of course you do have to follow some guidelines to make the code even more readable, but still. For me, without knowing Ada and Rust, Ada is way much easier to understand. Ada was designed with maintainability and readability in mind, and I think it shows, at least according to my experience. People have written stuff like "I see Ada as a verbose language, however, unlike say Java, the verbosity actually benefits readability.". I find it to be true. Perhaps you could compare some Ada code (something from AdaCore (GNAT, GNATColl)) with the Rust equivalent.

jodrellblank 6y ago
> "For me, without knowing Ada and Rust, Ada is way much easier to understand." If you don't know Ada then you don't /know/ that you understand it, you're assuming you do - and if you do that's because it looks like languages you already know. And if that's what you're saying is good about it, then what you're saying is "things I know are good". You're seeing "Ada looks familiar" and saying "Ada has good design" as if those are the same thing. You only need to look at some beginner programming discussions to see that block-structured, scoped, procedural, looped, branched, etc. features are not things people are born understanding - that you know them already and Ada has them is convenient for you. > "What the code does is not hidden behind symbols, for example." I looked at the Wikipedia page, it has equals, colon-equals, slash-equals, greater-than, less-than, apostrophe, parentheses, ampersand, double-quotes, equals-greater-than which seems to be an arrow not a comparison, double-dots, and of course "when" "is" "protected" etc. they're as much symbols as they are words. > "Ada and Rust, Ada is way much easier to understand" I'll quote Erik Naggum from an old comp.lang.lisp(?) comment: "When I work at this system up to 12 hours a day, I'm profoundly uninterested in what user interface a novice user would prefer.".