Re: A Pascal Subset of Ada (was: Why Ada is Failing Socially)

[sampson@cod.NOSC.MIL (Charles H. Sampson)]

In article <1991Jun25.022849.18078@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> larryc@poe.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Carroll) writes:

>One of the biggest mistakes of AJPO (or whoever made the decision) was to
>disallow Ada subsets.  I think they should have allowed ONE subset, 
>corresponding roughly to Pascal and including packages.  ...

     What was disallowed was creating a subset (or superset) compiler and
calling it Ada.  Even in the days when the name Ada was trademarked it would
have been possible to write and market a compiler for a Pascal subset of Ada,
provided it was called something like PasAda and no attempt was made to pass
it off as "an Ada compiler".  (My opinion.  I'm not a lawyer.)

     By the way, in the early 80s I tried to define a Pascal subset of Ada.
I found it a non-trivial exercise.  The problem was, I didn't want to in-
clude generics, but that is the only way you can do I/O.  Of the several
"solutions" I came up with to this dilemma, none really satisfied me.

                                 Charlie