Re: 30 Years

[munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok@uunet.uu.net (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

In article <EACHUS.93Sep10152513@spectre.mitre.org>, eachus@spectre.mitre.org (
Robert I. Eachus) writes:
> In article <26qc0u$k0b@louie.udel.edu> carroll@gloin.cis.udel.edu (Mark C. Ca
rroll) writes:
> 
>   > This is made even worse by the way in which Ada documents describe the
>   > language. I got the annotated reference manual for Ada9x, and went to
>   > print it out. How long could it possibly be? I use languages similar
>   > to Ada all the time, and the manuals are between 30 and 100 pages
>   > long. The Ada manual is over *500* pages, the overwhelming majority of
>   > which is bureaucratic twaddle. 
> 
>      How many programming language standards have you read?  The
> Pascal standard is small and readable, but, for example, the Algol 68
> standard probably wins all the prizes for obscurity and
> impenetrability, the size of the PL/1 standard (not PL/1 subset G)
> makes the Ada standard look like light reading, and (not to ignore
> popular languages) the COBOL RM easily surpasses even the AARM in
> bureaucratic twaddle (and size for that matter).

On my desk at the moment I have
 - the current Pascal standard (84 pages)
 - the current ISO C standard (228 pages)
 - the old rationale for the ANSI C standard (119 pages)
 - the ISO version of the POSIX.1 "UNIX system call" standard (352 pages)
I also have
 - the SPARCompiler C Programmers' Guide (406 pages)
If it comes to that,
 - the Turbo Pascal Version 5 Reference Guide (468 pages)
isn't that small either.  And how about
 - Common Lisp, the Language, 2nd Edition (1029 pages)
I haven't _got_ but I have _seen_ a draft of the Modula-2 standard.
I can tell you right now, you may _think_ that Modula-2 is a smaller
language than Ada, but the standard is quite a bit bigger!
I have several times tried to read the 1976 ANSI PL/I standard, which
we have in our library, and failed.  (Is there a more recent PL/I?)

If you compare the Ada LRM with the C standard and the Modula-2 draft,
it actually comes out pretty well.  It's more readable than the C
standard, *and* I was able to pick up a free copy of the machine-
readable text *legally*.

I've loaned my paper copy of the Ada LRM to someone else, but my
recollection is that the great bulk of it is syntax, definitions,
examples, and cross references.  (Maybe the cross references count
as "bureaucratic twaddle"?)  My copy is physically about the same
size as the C standard, and noticeably thinner than the POSIX one.
The "meat to twaddle ratio" for the Ada LRM is at least as good as
that for the C and POSIX standards.  It is so outrageous to claim
that "the overwhelming majority of" the Ada LRM is "bureaucratic
twaddle" that I think we are entitled to ask for either a detailed
justification or a retraction.

For a fair comparison, I suggest looking at the ISO Pascal _Extended_
standard.  I had to read it 5 times before I finally figured out what
"bindable" means.  It's about the same phsyical size as my copy of the
LRM (oh, it does make a difference what _size_ the pages are... the
standards I referred to about are printed on A4 paper) and it is
ever so much less readable.  It's almost all "meat", but it doesn't
_explain_ anything.  At least the LRM explains things.

-- 
Richard A. O'Keefe; ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au; RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.