<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>At the risk of being off topic, I’d just like to mention that Ada is alive and well. In fact Ada 2012, the latest version of the standard, is essentially finished. There is a small but vibrant community of Ada users as evidenced by the significant daily traffic on comp.lang.ada. On a personal level I use Ada daily.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Peter<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style='border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt'><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> owner-mercury-users@csse.unimelb.edu.au [mailto:owner-mercury-users@csse.unimelb.edu.au] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Michael Hendricks<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, December 26, 2011 11:06<br><b>To:</b> mercury-users@csse.unimelb.edu.au<br><b>Subject:</b> [mercury-users] Re: first impressions<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Sorry, premature send on that last email ...<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>As I mentioned a couple days ago, I'm learning Mercury. I thought I'd share my first impressions as a newcomer in case they're valuable to any of the core developers. If this post should be sent to the developers list instead, please let me know.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Some brief background, so you know where I'm coming from. I've been programming for around 20 years. I'm a software developer by trade working mostly in Perl and Haskell. I write a couple Prolog programs each year, but am still an intermediate at logic programming. I was drawn to Mercury because I see enormous potential in a logic programming language with static types.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>On the website, the introductory paragraph compares the language to Pascal and Ada. Since I haven't heard from those languages in years, I thought maybe Mercury was an old project having been abandoned back when those languages were still popular. I looked around for a date on the page and was relieved to find the Latest News section with posts within the last couple months. Perhaps it would be better to mention Java and C# instead of Pascal and Ada.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></body></html>