From:  "Robert I. Eachus" <[log in to unmask]>

> At 09:35 AM 11/11/98 -0800, Mark Lundquist wrote:
> >Ada supports the abstraction of "class" quite readily, even though it
> >doesn't have a specialized "class" construct.  I think it's the
> >abstraction that is important, not the syntax.  So I have to disagree;
> >the lack of a special "class" construct in Ada does *not* make it very
> >hard to do OO in Ada!...
>
>    Ada 95 does have a class construct, it is spelled tagged.

Well, sort of.  Part of the definition a class is the specification of
its public methods, but a tagged record declaration does not include
this.  A tagged record declaration doesn't suffice to define a class --
the type declaration together with the declarations of the primitives
constitute the definition of the class.

> Adding special notation for declaring classes in Ada would have created
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> either some unnecessary restrictions or backward compatibility problems.

Yes -- that is the position I was taking.  My use of the phrase "special
class construct" is to be understood as identical with your phrase
"special notation for declaring classes".