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From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Mike Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Apology
Message-ID: <1693@sparko.gwu.edu>
Date: 25 Mar 90 19:28:47 GMT
Reply-To: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Mike Feldman)
Organization: The George Washington University, Washington D.C.
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In pleading for an end to the language wars and hype on all sides, I 
think I went a bit too far and inadvertently dragged a few good names
in the dust. I apologize to Stroustrup, Meyer, Kernighan and Ritchie,
and whoever others' names I may have used. Ad hominem attacks ain't
good, and I'm sorry I yielded to the temptation to name names.

Look. We are all technical folks or we wouldn't be reading this group.
A certain amount of self-promotion goes along with any invention. I think
we, as good technical guys, need to try to distinguish between the promoters
and the thing being promoted. There's a lot of good stuff in Ada, even if it
did come from DoD and even if some folks got a little carried away with 
its promotion. Most of the real "hype" - by this I mean really exaggerated
claims - has died down, at least from where I sit in Washington. I believe
that most everyone is working in good faith to exploit the benefits of a
language designed for commonality instead of dialects, and for stability
instead of change. The residual hype we can ignore with impunity, I think,
and get on with our technical business.

I won't reiterate previous postings on the benefits of real standards - if 
you read 'em and agree, fine. If not, fine too. There are a lot of recent
developments - especially in the O-O world - that I wish Ada had been
prescient enough to incorporate in 1979. But I think these were really too
experimental to have adopted at that time. Whatever Ada9X incorporates from
all of this, let's try to give the folks a little credit for intelligence
and good faith, and do the best we can to live with the result.

There's a lot of good stuff in the other languages too. Let's stipulate that
C, C++, Eiffel, and the others are worthwhile inventions. The group is called
comp.lang.ada (or Info-Ada, if you read it on Internet). Let's try to stick
to the subject. If you want to bring other languages in for comparison,
I favor sober and thoughtful comparisons, with good examples, not shrill 
generalizations. I hope you agree.

Apologies again for the hasty language yesterday; no personal slurs intended.