Re: The actual quote from the Post AAS article

[mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <1993Mar15.035032.10779@seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:

>In article <8ceF1B1w165w@netlink.cts.com> mshapiro@netlink.cts.com (Michael Shapiro) writes:
>>
>>This discussion does bring up one of the points I make from time to time, 
>>the observation is the only "high order" language around.  All the others
>>are "high level" languages.  I have the feeling that this arbitrary 
>>change of nomenclature (seemingly traced back to the HOLWG) gives people 
>>the feeling that the DoD doesn't really want Ada to fit in with the 
>>community of programming languages.
>>
>I think it goes back farther than the HOLWG. DoD has _always_ used the term
>"high-order" languages. DoD also referred to ADP (Automatic Data Processing) 
>in the old days when the rest of the US said EDP (Electronic Data Processing).

>DoD also calls its TV dinners MRE's (Meals, Ready to Eat). I read that
>they were distributing leftover MRE's from Desert Storm to homeless
>shelters.

If you can say with a straight face that an MRE is the same thing as a
TV dinner, you've obviously never eaten either one or the other of
them.  Actually, their 'TV dinner' is called a 'traypack' (sp?),
except that it's a TV dinner for 40 or so.  MRE's aren't TV dinners; I
would maintain that they are also not Ready to Eat, but that's another
matter. 

>One can argue that it's weird that DoD has its own unique sublanguage
>of American English; I think I'd agree. But I don't think that it has
>anything in particular to do with Ada, or even with languages, and 
>pre-dates Ada. DoD didn't _change_ the terminology; they've _always_
>diverged from the rest of us. Perhaps they should change now, to agree
>with the rest of the world, but that is a different argument.

The argument that Ada tends to use different words for concepts that
were already known in other parts of the industry by different names
is fairly true, I would say, but I'm not sure that 'HOL' is an example
of that particular 'newspeak'.

-- 
"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.