Bilingual

Entropic Thoughts
17 hours ago
- Ada breaks object-oriented programming into separate features like encapsulation, reuse, inheritance, abstract interfaces, type extension, and dynamic dispatch, allowing opt-in.
- In Ada, package specifications and bodies are separate, providing clear visibility and compile-time structure.
- Ada requires explicit declarations for type extension and null records, preventing implicit assumptions.
- Memory management in Ada uses controlled types with Finalize for automatic cleanup, similar to RAII in C++.
- Ada uses package-based visibility control instead of class-based visibility, allowing child packages to access parent internals.
- Constructors in Ada are functions returning objects, but can be problematic for inheritance; child packages or child functions can avoid primitive operation inheritance.
- The prefixed method call syntax in Ada is syntactic sugar; dynamic dispatch requires class-wide types, not the syntax itself.
- Ada competes with C, not Java, and offers safer and more expressive alternatives to C's memory management.
Modula-3 History Collection on Computer History Museum
7 days ago
- Modula-3 was designed in the late 1980s by Luca Cardelli, Jim Donahue, Mick Jordan, Bill Kalsow, and Greg Nelson, aiming to be safe and efficient for systems and application programming.
- Key features included interfaces, objects, generics, threads, isolation of unsafe code, garbage collection, exceptions, and subtyping, many of which were ahead of their time.
- The language originated from Modula-2+ and was refined through several revisions, with the definitive book 'Systems Programming with Modula-3' published in 1991.
- Two main implementations existed: Olivetti Modula-3 (short-lived) and DEC SRC Modula-3, which became the basis for all later distributions.
- Subsequent distributions included CM3, PM3, Cambridge Modula-3, and EZM3, with maintenance later taken over by Elego and then moved to GitHub.
- Modula-3 was used in significant projects such as the SPIN extensible operating system, CVSup version control tool, persistent object stores, and distributed virtual environments like COTERIE.
- The language's influence persisted through its concepts and the annotated archive maintained by editor Paul McJones.
I Redesigned English
13 days ago
- English has many irregularities that learners must memorize, such as irregular verbs, complex spelling, and arbitrary rules for articles and prepositions.
- World English is a redesigned version that eliminates these irregularities, making the language more regular and predictable while remaining legible as English.
- Key changes in World English include regularizing all verbs to use '-ed' for past tense, simplifying 'be' to three forms, using regular plurals, reducing articles to one, and removing do-support.
- The design prioritizes ease and clarity over nuance and idiom, aiming to show how simple English can be while still being understandable.
- The project is presented as a research effort to map English's difficulty, not as a campaign for adoption, highlighting that much of English's complexity doesn't aid communication.

Hasty Briefsbeta

language design

Entropic Thoughts

Modula-3 History Collection on Computer History Museum

I Redesigned English