(j3.2006) Ada committee (WG9) position on new requests

[Dick Hendrickson]

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 5:43 PM, Bill Long <longb at cray.com> wrote:

> There seem to be a couple of differences between the Ada scheme an ours.
>
> 1) Ada has the flood gates open at all times. (Or maybe not a flood, if
> few people care enough to submit requests?)  We have phased operation where
> we allow feature requests, settle on a set of new features, and then have
> an implementation and publication phase during which new features requests
> are disallowed. I think that avoiding the distraction of new feature
> requests during the implementation phase is an advantage.
>

Yes, but.  Wouldn't it be possible to always welcome feature requests and
also process them in a time-structured way?   If they come in at an
inappropriate  time in the work plan just put them in a holding tank and
process them when the right time comes.  Maybe create a (curated?
moderated?)  publicly visible Journal Of Swell New Ideas and allow people
to contribute and discuss things as they come up.  If a person has a
current problem (use case) he's likely to program around it, rather than
wait until the public suggestion gates open in the near future.  Once he's
programmed around it, he's unlikely to remember to submit the problem in a
few years.

Dick Hendrickson

>
> 2) There is a potential difference between ?use case? (Fortran) and
> ?programming problem? (Ada).  The ?programming problem? description seems
> more open to abuse.  Does "programming problem? include the case someone
> who has a badly designed code and wants to be bailed out of a hard place by
> adding some wart to the language that allows him to avoid fixing the code?
>  Consider, for example, the recent email thread about misguided desires to
> redefine the CMPLX function so wrong programs could become conforming.
>  I?m more comfortable with the ?use case? terminology.  Time will tell if
> that confidence is misplaced.
>
> Cheers,
> Bill
>
>
> > On Jul 7, 2017, at 2:28 PM, Van Snyder <van.snyder at jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> >
> > WG 9 welcomes suggestions for language enhancements at any time. These
> > should be sent to ada-comment at ada-auth.org. For enhancement requests (as
> > opposed to identification of errors in the Ada 2012 Standard), it is very
> > important to describe the programming problem and why the Ada 2012
> solution
> > is complex, expensive, or impossible. A detailed description of a
> specific
> > enhancement is welcome but not necessarily required. The goal of the ARG
> is
> > to solve as many programming problems as possible with new/enhanced Ada
> > features that fit into the existing Ada framework. Thus the ARG will be
> > looking at the language as a whole, which may suggest alternative
> solutions
> > to the problem.
> >
> > A similar posture doesn't seem unreasonable for Fortran.
> >
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>
> Bill Long
>      longb at cray.com
> Principal Engineer, Fortran Technical Support &   voice:  651-605-9024
> Bioinformatics Software Development                      fax:
> 651-605-9143
> Cray Inc./ 2131 Lindau Lane/  Suite 1000/  Bloomington, MN  55425
>
>
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