Re: Ada's (in)visibility in the engineering community

[sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.com!mksol!mccall@ames.arc. nasa.gov (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <61990005@acf3.NYU.EDU> schonber@acf3.NYU.EDU (Ed Schonberg) writes:


>Relay-Version: version nyu B notes v1.6.1 1/11/90; site acf3.NYU.EDU
>From: schonberg@cs.nyu.edu (Edmond Schonberg)
>Date: 28 Sep 92 16:52 EDT
>Subject: Ada's (in)visibility in the engineering community

>Val Kartchner (cal@news.ccutah.edu) say:
>> Well, it would seem that Mr. Schonberg was incorrect, since Bjarne
>> Stroustrup has stated publicly numerous times that Ada was the
>> inspiration for some of the features that he put in C++.  

I think you may have misattributed this bit, since I think it was mine
and not Val's.  I say 'think' because I'm not positive, since Val and
I posted notes on this subject that were quite similar in several
places. 

>My apologies for having missed this reference; the first edition of the
>book had no mention of Ada, and in  the public presentations I have
>attended Ada was NEVER mentioned. It stands to reason that Ada would
>have to be mentioned in connection with generics and exceptions. Even
>though some prefiguration of these features appeared in older languages,
>it is fair to say that Ada was the first reasonably widespread language
>to develop these features fully. When I mentioned "the C++ community" I
>did not mean Bjarne Stroustrup, whose erudition does not need my praise,
>but the great majority of C++ programmers, who might have an instinctive
>reaction against Ada, even when some features of their favorite language
>owes something to it. We might as well aknowledge the extent to which
>we influence each other. How else will we learn to write better
>software?

Actually, so far as I know, Bjarne has always been quite forthcoming
about which parts of C++ were inspired by what languages (including
Ada).  He has made repeated public statements about this, and just
recently posted about it again in comp.lang.c++.  I'm curious; have
you had large numbers of people from "the C++ community" denying that
any parts of C++ were inspired by Ada?  I ask this because, frankly,
the only time I've ever seen anyone claim that nothing in C++ came
from Ada is when Ada people attribute it to C++ people.  I've never
seen anyone from "the C++ community" say this.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.