From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Xref: utzoo comp.lang.ada:2186 comp.software-eng:1261 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!munnari!vax1!dougcc From: dougcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Douglas Miller) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: "Forced to Use Ada" Message-ID: <163@csv.viccol.edu.au> Date: 15 Mar 89 01:33:46 GMT References: <6125@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <4624@hubcap.UUCP> <6153@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <7682@venera.isi.edu> Organization: Computer Services, Victoria College, Melbourne List-Id: In article <7682@venera.isi.edu>, raveling@vaxb.isi.edu (Paul Raveling) writes: > Standardization is precisely the greatest danger of ADA, > particularly because the DOD standard doesn't even permit > extensions. Even?! This is essential to maintain portability. > If we accept the ADA standard we lose the > option to improve as we learn better ways to approach > software engineering. We only give up the option to do software engineering research on our production software --- a good thing. > Suppose somone designed a language provably better than these -- > if we mandate an existing standard, such as ADA or C, we risk > preserving a dinosaur at the expense of suffocating mammals. If ADA is already a dinosaur, what does that make COBOL, a diatom? Come on, what about the real world? Surely it more important to stem the waste of squillions of person-years used to port software between language dialects. ADA is the only language that can currently do this due to the no subsets, no supersets policy. I don't believe anyone is suggesting that ADA should last forever. But it is a quantum leap over existing production languages, and should be adopted as the standard for developing production software, until research produces the next quantum leap. To quote rjh@cs.purdue.EDU (Bob Hathaway) in article <6153@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>: >Does any of the above languages provide all of the necessary and desirable >constructs to provide well designed software and a method for validating >correct compilers? What other language provides concurrency, dynamic >exception handling, generics, reasonable encapsulation constructs, Adts, >complete control structures, variable number of parameters with defaults, >... Ada was designed to standardize software and it >could replace almost any language with exceptions being rare. > That's my usual comment about UNIX, but it also suits languages. An operating system is a fundamentally different thing to a programming language. A programming language is much lower level --- this is where standards are really appropriate (analogy: no two models of motor car are (or should be) the same, yet many of the basic components conform to standards that enables a trained mechanic to do basic work on any car).