Re: How does your language grow? (Follow-up on comments on ADM Tuttle

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!darwin.sura. net!seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Feldman)]

In article <9307141657.AA27874@manta.nosc.mil> mshapiro@MANTA.NOSC.MIL (Michael
 D Shapiro) writes:
>
[stuff deleted]

>
>Perhaps one of Ada's acceptance problems is that experimentation
>allowing expansion and contraction of the language have been
>discouraged.  This mode has given gradual growth of most other
>programming languages, supporting new programming paradigms as they
>arise.  Periodic standardization describes a consensus of the
>then-current state of the language.  The new features allow the
>languages to increase their level of helping programmers in writing
>programs.

I agree with your second sentence, but find your first sentence
unsupportable. The _validation_ process has certainly emphasized the
notion that subsets and supersets create dialects and therefore Babel.
But that's only the _validation_ process. NOTHING has prevented the
development of experimental - unvalidated - versions of Ada. 

One could argue that the "if it ain't validated it ain't Ada" policy of
the early years inhibited this kind of experimentation, but the policy
was changed de facto as early as (roughly) 1986, and _officially_
in 1988, when the Ada trademark was allowed to lapse. 1988, guys.
That's a long time. Anyone wishing to develop extended Ada's (indeed
contracted ones, too, but that's not where the action is), was free not
only to do so but also to call it Ada. 

Even if such a system could not legally be validated, it could certainly
have been used for any project that wasn't production DoD work. Let's
debunk this myth once and for all. I think we can forgive DoD for insisting
that compilers used for its serious projects be validated and therefore not
support dialects - after all, that's what eliminating the language Babel
is all about. But that never stood in the way of the rest of us.

I've promised not to contribute to flame wars, so I'll not engage in
speculation about why this experimentation didn't really happen. But
facts are facts - I NEVER heard anyone discourage experimentation, 
except when it came to serious compilers for serious DoD projects. 
University or other lab projects could darn well have done the kind
of stuff you mention. I'll leave it to the flamers to fight endlessly
about _why_ they didn't do it, but this does _not_ mean they _couldn't_.
I've hung around this business for ten years; I think I have my facts
straight.
>
>Ada has had some preprocessor work, but for the most part changes have
>had to wait for the next giant step, Ada 9X.  While large-scale program
>managers may get warm feelings from this approach, many language
>experimenters (who might significantly improve the definition) become
>uncomfortable waiting for the next orders.  They choose to ignore Ada.

Phooey. Why should "the rest of us" in language experimentation stand
around waiting for orders? Nobody stopped us from moving ahead. Nobody.

Cheers -

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-5296 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Pork is what those other guys get from the Government."
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