>>— Ada with a very uniform structure and syntax implies that it was designed. >> >>— C / C++ with its horrid inconsistencies cannot be assumed to have been designed or [exclusive] grown.
Why? Just because an implementation wasn’t adhered to... or that it was ill-designed doesn’t say anything about its actually BEING designed (except the adjectives show prior-knowledge on our part).
There is at least one confusion in language somewhere in the thread: I merely copied the sentences about Ada and C++.
The important thing here is that ADA "implies" it was designed, but C++ "cannot be assumed".
This to me sounds like a different standard for the two different languages.
Unless you are saying that a certain amount of structure and syntax is necessary to *infer* design with some degree of confidence; that Ada meets this threshold, whatever it is, and C++ does not: but that C++ happens to have been (in some fashion) designed anyway?
As in the following quote:
Why? Just because an implementation wasn’t adhered to... or that it was ill-designed doesn’t say anything about its actually BEING designed (except the adjectives show prior-knowledge on our part).
This is what I was trying to say in a roundabout fashion: by explicitly laying out some of the pitfalls in the design/implementation process, I was pointing out that even things which *were* designed can come up looking pretty lousy.
And that therefore, just as you said, something looking bad is not sufficient to declare it "not designed".
(And then there is the further issue of what constitutes "designed" -- is it data types, structures, standardization common features?
We are in agreement, I think.
Cheers!
>We are in agreement, I think.
For the most part. I was using levels of regularity for my main criteria in comparing languages against “designedness,” we can also use natural-language for example:
English is akin to C/C++ in the regard that it [seems to] hold more exceptions than rules; especially in conjugation and pluralization. { mouse -> mice; house -> houses; goose -> geese; caboose -> cabooses & run -> ran; stand -> stood; eat -> ate; bake -> baked. } So no wonder English is such a difficult second language.
Japanese, on the other hand is VERY regular in respect to conjugation and pluralization. Pluralization is done implicitly when the subject is numbered or explicitly with the -tachi conjugation. ( I => Watashi; We/Us => Watashitachi.) and there are only two to four exceptions to the conjugation-rules (ie virtually none as compared to English).
Another “language” {I’m stretching the term a bit} that shows design would be Linear Algebra (Matrices & Vectors and such), which have a very regular extension/usage {even if the rules for, say, multiplication are a bit complex at first}.