From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Mike Feldman)
Subject: Hmmm... maybe I spoke too soon
Date: 24 Mar 90 23:41:22 GMT [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1692@sparko.gwu.edu> (raw)
Oh, well. I guess I spoke too soon and jinxed the end of the language wars.
Look, ladies and gentlemen. PLEASE let's get technical again. I have worked
with Ada since 1982. I live in the DC area; I teach in downtown Washington;
many of my students are defense industry employees. The only _hype_ I ever
heard about Ada was from a few people, not directly involved with its design
or adoption, who saw that there was money to be made in Ada. This is the
American way. The C folks (Kernighan and Ritchie included) hype C; Stroustrup
hypes C++, too. Meyer hypes Eiffel, too. The Smalltalk crowd is not above
a little evangelism either. Which of us can resist a little personal
horn-blowing?
Enough is enough, though. I hope this is a technical newsgroup.
I am a teacher. Fifteen years in the computer science thing, 25 in computing.
I have taught lots of Ada to lots of people.
Also Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, PL/1, APL, and (gasp) C. Languages are tools.
They are not religions. Let's grow up. Yes I write and teach Ada. I don't hype
it, I don't dump on it. Neither does anyone else I know, and I know a _lot_
of Ada folks. I cannot blame DoD for taking a hopeful line about something
they felt might get 'em better software for less bucks. I also can't really
blame 'em for trying to make order out of the '70's chaos. Can you?
Ada has strengths and weaknesses; let's exploit the strengths, let's try to
fix the weaknesses or at least code around 'em. But for Heaven's sake, can we
PLEASE stop the sniping? PLEASE?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Michael Feldman
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
+1-202-994-5253
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu
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