CS 342 Lecture -*- Outline -*-

* Analysis of Ada
** Important features
	modules that support data abstraction (packages)
		exception handling, concurrency, type system
	Lot of nice details
		especially syntactic, numeric types, type checking

** Problems
	DoD got what it asked for (largely fulfills requirements)
	Ada is big, complex language incorporating many trade-offs
		but no unifying vision (no particular method)
		-no subsets allowed! (enhances portability)
		-compilers have been very complex, many problems
	Lack of methodological perspective
		packages, exceptions, tasks
	Should be more general.
		generics

** fundamental flaw of Ada (and other languages so far)
	not the language design itself, but the paradigm behind it.
	-Ada's abstraction is a von Neumann computer
			CPU -- bottleneck -- Memory
			var    :=            expression
		-word-at-a-time orientation (somewhat mollified in Ada)
			want to program at a higher level of abstraction
		-operational thinking
			want to manipulate programs formally (algebraically)
			(programs are symbol manipulation formulas)