Re: Hoare's gripes about Ada

Re: Hoare's gripes about Ada

[Dave Williamson]

I can't make any comments on Tony Hoare's speech in 1980, nor on any
retractions he may have made since. However, I can recall the substance of 
a talk he gave to my graduating computer science class in early 1983 when 
asked about his "feelings towards Ada".

His response to Ada itself was guarded and non-specific.  He indicated that
he felt that programming languages should become smaller and more application
specific.  He felt that large programming lanaguages were a thing of the
past, and that no language could be all things to all people.  He basically
advocated use of the right language for the right task.  I don't recall him
heaping praise on any language nor expressing disdain for any others.  I 
don't even recall that he mentioned any other languages in his response 
(though he may have).

If Hoare still holds these opinions (and everyone is free to change one
at any time given an increase in knowledge and awareness), then I can hardly
see him being an advocate of any languages that are currently in wide
commercial use.

Ted Holden has been playing the 1980 Hoare speech to death on
this newsgroup for at least 3 years now along with his Ada woes from the
initial 9X bulletin board.  Identical messages seem to appear every few
months as he tunes back in.  I'm convinced someone's got a directory of Ada 
gripe files on disk that just get sent over and over again - a DoD virus
program perhaps? :-)  My, but creativity is a wonderful thing...

Dave Williamson
Jade Simulations
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
dlw@ottawa.jade.com

Re: Hoare's gripes about Ada

[Keith Shillington]

In article <Chameleon.930826095659.dlw@pcdave.ottawa.jade.com> dlw@pcdave.ottaw
a.jade.com (Dave Williamson) writes:
>...  Identical messages seem to appear every few
>months as he tunes back in.

Maybe it is time to start comp.lang.ada FMR (Frequently Made Responses) to
add to the FAQ!

-- AKA the_other_other_keith
-- 
  Keith Shillington               /---------\   "No matter where you go,
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