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Ada intentionally prioritizes readability over write-ability, hence English-language keywords and the like. It’s designed for large, long-running systems that

Ada intentionally prioritizes readability over write-ability, hence English-language keywords and the like. It’s designed for large, long-running systems that must be maintained over years or decades. The thinking is that over their lifetime, such systems will be read more than written, by rotating teams of programmers who need to get up to speed with a complex codebase, repeatedly. In maintenance mode, modifications will be less frequent than reads.

zozbot234 5y ago
"Real English language keywords" for readability was probably the most sensible choice back in the early 1980s when Ada was first standardized. They're rather less popular today, of course. The interesting question is, does using, e.g. BEGIN and END instead of curly brackets really make it easier for novices who are learning to code today. It's an interesting topic and one that isn't often seen here.
- foerbert 5y ago
  "begin" and "end" are probably the most arguable, but in the context of everything else being a real-word keyword I think they make sense. Ada was not my first language, and I was a little dubious about the keywords at first, but I quickly changed my mind. Now I wish every language did it (obviously, not literally every). It's really nice for a couple reasons. One is just googling. You pretty much have a built-in shared lexicon, so there's no trying to remember the right name for the problematic symbol, or figuring out the best way to describe it. There's also no trying to remember what symbol does the thing you want, which is really nice even when just coming back to a language feature you haven't used recently enough to be fresh on. I have no idea how much these things would matter in a more structured environment. I pick up words way faster than symbols and my memory isn't so great, so I think it would have helped me even there. But I don't know how universal that is. Though given the number of times I had to help the actual CS majors with basic syntax stuff, even after the 101 course... I can't help but suspect it would be useful.

zozbot234 5y ago

"Real English language keywords" for readability was probably the most sensible choice back in the early 1980s when Ada was first standardized. They're rather less popular today, of course. The interesting question is, does using, e.g. BEGIN and END instead of curly brackets really make it easier for novices who are learning to code today. It's an interesting topic and one that isn't often seen here.

foerbert 5y ago
"begin" and "end" are probably the most arguable, but in the context of everything else being a real-word keyword I think they make sense. Ada was not my first language, and I was a little dubious about the keywords at first, but I quickly changed my mind. Now I wish every language did it (obviously, not literally every). It's really nice for a couple reasons. One is just googling. You pretty much have a built-in shared lexicon, so there's no trying to remember the right name for the problematic symbol, or figuring out the best way to describe it. There's also no trying to remember what symbol does the thing you want, which is really nice even when just coming back to a language feature you haven't used recently enough to be fresh on. I have no idea how much these things would matter in a more structured environment. I pick up words way faster than symbols and my memory isn't so great, so I think it would have helped me even there. But I don't know how universal that is. Though given the number of times I had to help the actual CS majors with basic syntax stuff, even after the 101 course... I can't help but suspect it would be useful.