Re: Open Systems closed to Ada?

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!caen!uwm.edu!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-stat]

I don't intend to fan the flames, but I'd like to shed a little light if I
can do so.  The first thing to realize is that the "C community" and the
"UNIX community" are closely tied together.  The language and the operating
system bootstrapped each other.

emery@dr_no.mitre.org (David Emery) writes:
>Maybe my experience in POSIX is different than the "real workd".  But
>I tell you this:  I've met very few C programmers who have any
>experience with languages significantly different than C (FORTRAN is,
>after all, a similar language.  Lisp, Smalltalk, SNOBOL, COBOL and Ada
>represent different paradigms.)...

While the classification of FORTRAN makes sense, COBOL belongs in the same
class.  (It differs most strongly in superficial matters.)  Ada isn't very
far out from C, FORTRAN, COBOL, (and you could add the extended Algol
family out through Pascal, too).  But this disagreement is less than our
agreement that Lisp, Smalltalk, and SNOBOL are truly different.

SNOBOL is unarguably different...it's definitely a different way of think-
ing.  Now, where is SNOBOL today?  Mostly history...it evolved through SL5
(which was mainly an experiment) to Icon.  Icon is alive and well; it's
being used for serious programming...in the UNIX community, where there was
a niche and it could find acceptance.  Most Icon programmers are also
competent C programmers--and the superficial appearance and syntax of Icon
bear a useful resemblance to that of C, although the programming paradigms
are very different.

Lisp?  Alive and well, obviously...and many mutations exist.  Interesting
that so many C programmers use emacs, an editor whose extensibility is
based on a Lisp programming model.

Or have a look at tcl, a tool-language that's emerged in the past few years
and met resounding success...in the C/UNIX community, because that's where
it could find people flexible enough to try something new.

You can even look at PostScript...and beneath the obvious strong influence
of Forth, you can see style obviously influenced by crossover C programmers.
There's "Display PostScript" and pswrap and its inverse and a pile of C /
PostScript interaction.  I suspect most PostScript programmers (an odd
breed) are also C programmers.

Beyond that, the C/UNIX community has achieved some of its most notable
results through the use of many little languages.  Any significant category
of tasks is a candidate for a new language.  If anything, people are TOO
ready to try new languages.  Various perceptions of the community's atti-
tudes can vary widely, but there are too many real polyglot examples to
maintain an honest belief that they have a one-language view.  C is the
Swiss-army-knife (and perl is the Swiss-army-chainsaw), or the Vise-
Grips(R)...but there are many other language tools.

>...Even those who profess to like C++
>think its greatest feature is backwards compatability with C.

(...iwillnotflameiwillnotflameIWILLNOTFLAMEokmaybejustalittlebit...)
This really is absurd on the face of it...nobody who can tell a keyboard
from a mouse would accept the size and complexity of C++ (and it IS too
large and too complex) just for a list of features whose top item is
backward compatibility.  Anyone who feels that way just writes in C.

>The C community that I object to has as its primary characteristic
>"Narrow-Mindedness".  

I've really never found this C community that you speak of...in spite of
having been in what is apparently "the C community" for about 12 years.
Since by long background I'm a "language person" I think I'd have noticed.
I've certainly played around with enough different languages in C-land.

>The Ayatollahs of the C community...[worst of the diatribe deleted]

I think you need to read Mike Feldman's recent article, have a beer, and
relax.  A string of epithets only adds to the arguments against your
position.
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@raven.eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd    Boulder, Colorado
	...Straight, but not narrow.