* Re: Integer division: a winner declared [not found] ` <1970@peora.UUCP> @ 1986-02-19 10:03 ` Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Stavros Macrakis 1986-02-21 4:12 ` Integer division: a winner declared Peter Ladkin [not found] ` <127@diablo.ARPA> 1 sibling, 2 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Matthew P. Wiener @ 1986-02-19 10:03 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <1970@peora.UUCP> jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) writes: >The problem is, as far as the implementation of machines is concerned, Ada >is likely to be the driving force for the forseeable future -- any company >doing an implementation is faced with either complying with Ada, or >suffering a performance penalty making the Ada compiler adapt the results >of the division (in software) to suit the Ada definition. Due to the >DoD's requirement for Ada, it seems likely that most manufacturers would >choose the Ada definition for the divide operations in their instruction >sets. You may be interested that many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. This includes Los Alamos National Labs, Lawrence Livermore Labs, the National Security Agency, NASA and Lockheed. Considering that all the biggies run UNIX on Cray-2s and are--if they are intelligent--moving towards workstations that will talk with the Cray-2s quite easily (read UNIX workstations), it looks like that a large portion of DoD programming will move towards C, not Ada. Incidentally, LLL and NSA both have their own private languages. >[Note that the Ada standard was open for public comment through many >revisions, so if there was a strong opinion about division, it should have >been (and probably was) voiced then.] Yes and no. Several companies were asked to make suggestions and they laughed at the Ada idea even then. I for one do not care what the Ada standard is, and couldn't imagine why I would have wanted to contribute any strong feelings about language design to a language I couldn't care about. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. >Thus it looks like the "intuitive" Ada definition wins. Hardy har har. [And to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Integer division semantics; Ada 1986-02-19 10:03 ` Integer division: a winner declared Matthew P. Wiener @ 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Stavros Macrakis 1986-02-21 18:20 ` Contractors and agencies using Ada Beth Katz ` (2 more replies) 1986-02-21 4:12 ` Integer division: a winner declared Peter Ladkin 1 sibling, 3 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Stavros Macrakis @ 1986-02-20 17:38 UTC (permalink / raw) In a discussion of division standards, Matthew P. Wiener (weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU) brings up some questions about the role of Ada: <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> > ...many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to > be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available > unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. You appear to have a strange model of programming language choice. Do you have some documentation for your claims? > This includes [LANL, LLL, NSA, NASA, Lockheed]. ... Ada is required only for (most) DoD embedded computer systems. No one is trying to impose Ada for scientific (LANL, LLL) applications or in research in general. NSA -- who knows? NASA has selected Ada as the programming language for the Space Station. Lockheed will be using Ada in most future embedded systems. > Considering that all the biggies run UNIX on Cray-2s and are--if > they are intelligent--moving towards workstations that will talk > with the Cray-2s quite easily (read UNIX workstations), it looks > like that a large portion of DoD programming will move towards C, > not Ada. ... There is no contradiction between Unix and Ada. Indeed, Intermetrics developed and runs their Ada compiler (Byron Ada) under UTS (Amdahl's Unix for the 370 architecture) -- as well, of course, as under other hosts and targets (Note: I consult for Intermetrics). C was used for some bootstrap RTS modules which would otherwise have been written in machine language; they are being rewritten in Ada. > Incidentally, LLL and NSA both have their own private languages. This is one of the raisons d'etre of Ada. The Air Force, the Navy, the Army, etc. ALL had their own languages, many of them based on Algol 58 (yes, 58, not 68). If the LLL and NSA languages have some special attributes which makes them particularly suited for their users, I would imagine they will continue to be used. If, on the other hand, they are simply not-invented-here growths, I would imagine they would fade away as more and more facilities (packages, tool) become available for Ada. > ... Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded > way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. ... [And > to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize > many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] Insults and condescension don't help your argument. -s Macrakis@Harvard.{Harvard.EDU,ARPA,uucp,csnet} @Harvunxh.bitnet ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Contractors and agencies using Ada 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Stavros Macrakis @ 1986-02-21 18:20 ` Beth Katz 1986-02-21 18:45 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-21 19:03 ` Matthew P. Wiener 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Beth Katz @ 1986-02-21 18:20 UTC (permalink / raw) Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ucbvax!brahms!weemba writes: > You may be interested that many of the largest defense companies/ > contractors consider Ada to be a complete joke and have no intention > of making it available unless their programmers start screaming and > begging for it. This includes Los Alamos National Labs, Lawrence > Livermore Labs, the National Security Agency, NASA and Lockheed. > Considering that all the biggies run UNIX on Cray-2s and are--if > they are intelligent--moving towards workstations that will talk > with the Cray-2s quite easily (read UNIX workstations), it looks > like that a large portion of DoD programming will move towards C, > not Ada. To set the record straight (and followup on Macrakis's comments), NASA has decided to use Ada for Space Station. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, one flight dynamics simulator is being developed by two teams to examine the feasibility of using Ada. One team is using Ada while the other is using the more traditional FORTRAN. Detailed data (collected as part of the Software Engineering Laboratory) will be examined from both practical and research perspectives to help NASA make a decision about using Ada. Ada is being used as the only development language on at least one other project at Goddard. I'm fairly sure that other NASA sites are also considering using Ada. NASA hasn't dismissed it out-of-hand and certainly doesn't consider it a joke. As far as UNIX workstations and Ada being mutually exclusive (it seems to me that Wiener's statement implies that), Verdix has a compiler running under UNIX on Sun workstations. NASA Goddard is using DEC's VMS/Ada on their Vaxen. Not everybody uses Crays. No comment from me on the other 'biggies' mentioned above. I hesitate to lump everyone together. Elizabeth Katz Dept. of CS - Univ. of Maryland Arpanet: beth@mimsy.umd.edu CSnet: beth@umcp-cs Usenet: ...!seismo!umcp-cs!beth *** I'm one of the monitors for the Goddard dual development, *** *** and I've been using the Verdix compiler on our Vaxen which *** *** run UNIX. All opinions mentioned above are my own. *** ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Integer division semantics; Ada 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Stavros Macrakis 1986-02-21 18:20 ` Contractors and agencies using Ada Beth Katz @ 1986-02-21 18:45 ` Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-21 19:03 ` Matthew P. Wiener 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Matthew P. Wiener @ 1986-02-21 18:45 UTC (permalink / raw) Perhaps the following belongs to e-mail only, but I'm willing to apologize for the gratuitous Ada-bashing. I was rather stunned at the attitude that "Ada does it that way so it must be right" in the posting I had ridiculed. In article <728@harvard.UUCP> macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis) writes: >In a discussion of division standards, Matthew P. Wiener >(weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU) brings up some questions about the role >of Ada: > <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> >> ...many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to >> be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available >> unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. > >You appear to have a strange model of programming language choice. >Do you have some documentation for your claims? It comes from talking to numerous people who work at such places over the years. Condescension and derision were the usual attitude, and I was passing it along. Comments like "Didn't DoD have the same hopes for COBOL? Hardy Har Har." were typical. I should emphasize this attitude does not reflect on the language so much as on the DoD == fubar equation. >> ... Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded >> way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. ... [And >> to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize >> many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] > >Insults and condescension don't help your argument. Then I'll say it politely: the mathematically boneheaded way of doing integer division does not seem to have much inherently logical reasons for being adopted, yet it is nearly universal in computer languages. The article I was replying to asked why hadn't I or others who care about the matter given input to the language when we had the chance. I suspect that such input was ignored--the discussion on integer division has mostly re- vealed "idiotic reasons" for supporting the traditional implementation--and I wouldn't be surprised if they followed the tradition. But it seems Ada has both 'mod' and 'rem': but the posting I was responding to ('rem' is the winner in the great integer division debate since Ada does it that way) seemed to imply that it only had 'rem'. So I stand corrected. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Integer division semantics; Ada 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Stavros Macrakis 1986-02-21 18:20 ` Contractors and agencies using Ada Beth Katz 1986-02-21 18:45 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Matthew P. Wiener @ 1986-02-21 19:03 ` Matthew P. Wiener 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Matthew P. Wiener @ 1986-02-21 19:03 UTC (permalink / raw) Perhaps the following belongs to e-mail only, but I'm willing to apologize for the gratuitous Ada-bashing. I was rather stunned at the attitude that "Ada does it that way so it must be right" in the posting I had ridiculed. In article <728@harvard.UUCP> macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis) writes: >In a discussion of division standards, Matthew P. Wiener >(weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU) brings up some questions about the role >of Ada: > <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> >> ...many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to >> be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available >> unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. > >You appear to have a strange model of programming language choice. >Do you have some documentation for your claims? It comes from talking to numerous people who work at such places over the years. Condescension and derision were the usual attitude, and I was passing it along. Comments like "Didn't DoD have the same hopes for COBOL? Hardy Har Har." were typical. I should emphasize this attitude does not reflect on the language so much as on the DoD == fubar equation. >> ... Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded >> way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. ... [And >> to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize >> many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] > >Insults and condescension don't help your argument. Then I'll say it politely: the mathematically boneheaded way of doing integer division does not seem to have much inherently logical reasons for being adopted, yet it is nearly universal in computer languages. The article I was replying to asked why hadn't I or others who care about the matter given input to the language when we had the chance. I suspect that such input was ignored--the discussion on integer division has mostly re- vealed "idiotic reasons" for supporting the traditional implementation--and I wouldn't be surprised if they followed the tradition. But it seems Ada has both 'mod' and 'rem'. The posting I was responding to, by asserting that 'rem' is the winner in the great integer division debate since Ada does it that way, seemed to imply that it only had 'rem'. So I stand corrected and the former paragraph is moot. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Integer division: a winner declared 1986-02-19 10:03 ` Integer division: a winner declared Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Stavros Macrakis @ 1986-02-21 4:12 ` Peter Ladkin 1986-02-21 4:58 ` Peter Ladkin 1 sibling, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Peter Ladkin @ 1986-02-21 4:12 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <11923@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes: > You may be interested that many of the largest defense companies/contractors > consider Ada to be a complete joke and have no intention of making it > available > unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. This includes > Los Alamos National Labs, Lawrence Livermore Labs, > the National Security Agency, > NASA and Lockheed. Considering ADA to be flawed - not in one of your cases. Having no intention of making it available, again false in two of your quoted list. From first hand knowledge. There is enormous pressure to write in ADA for DOD work. DOE? No idea. Peter Ladkin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Integer division: a winner declared 1986-02-21 4:12 ` Integer division: a winner declared Peter Ladkin @ 1986-02-21 4:58 ` Peter Ladkin 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Peter Ladkin @ 1986-02-21 4:58 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <5030@kestrel.ARPA>, ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) writes: > Considering ADA to be flawed - not in one of your cases. I meant - at least one of the organisations quoted doesn't consider ADA to be flawed. > Having no intention of making it available, again false in two of > your quoted list. > From first hand knowledge. To be read similarly. Sorry for the confusion. Peter Ladkin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <127@diablo.ARPA>]
* Re: Integer division: a winner declared [not found] ` <127@diablo.ARPA> @ 1986-02-21 8:34 ` Gene Ward Smith 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Gene Ward Smith @ 1986-02-21 8:34 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <127@diablo.ARPA> avg@diablo.UUCP (Allen VanGelder) writes: >Ada clearly has it right. Knuth agrees, but spells "rem" differently. >Ada examples: > 5/ 3 = 1 5 rem 3 = 2 5 mod 3 = 2 > (-5)/ 3 = -1 -5 rem 3 = -2 -5 mod 3 = 1 > 5/(-3) = -1 5 rem -3 = 2 5 mod -3 = -2 > (-5)/(-3) = 1 -5 rem -3 = -2 -5 mod -3 = -1 > It looks like I need to unsay most of the bad things I said about Ada. Sorry about that, Adaphiles, but at first I thought J. Eric Roskos was saying Ada had two mod-type functions, but later decided he was saying it had only one (since he said Knuth's was different). I hope foot-in-mouth disease isn't catching. >For b > 0, Z_b = {0,1,2,...,b-1} by standard definition. For b < 0 >I am unaware of any standard definition, but we might as well define >Z_b = {0,-1,-2,...,b+1}. Note that b+1 is the multiplicative identity. There is a standard remainder defintion for negative b, but it really doesn't matter; the Knuth/Ada definition is just fine. >I can't imagine implementing -5/3 = -2. If you really need this, I Just today I needed this. It took an extra (C language) function definition. I have *never in my life*, to the best of my recollection, wanted or needed -5/2 = -1. It's not as important as mod by any means, so I will just leave you with this thought: it's still wrong, but the situation is improving. Maybe the next "language to end all languages" after Ada will finally get it right. ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ucbvax!weyl!gsmith "Dumb problem. DUMB!!!" ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1986-02-21 19:03 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- [not found] <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> [not found] ` <5100003@ccvaxa> [not found] ` <548@ism780c.UUCP> [not found] ` <1970@peora.UUCP> 1986-02-19 10:03 ` Integer division: a winner declared Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-20 17:38 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Stavros Macrakis 1986-02-21 18:20 ` Contractors and agencies using Ada Beth Katz 1986-02-21 18:45 ` Integer division semantics; Ada Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-21 19:03 ` Matthew P. Wiener 1986-02-21 4:12 ` Integer division: a winner declared Peter Ladkin 1986-02-21 4:58 ` Peter Ladkin [not found] ` <127@diablo.ARPA> 1986-02-21 8:34 ` Gene Ward Smith
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox