From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,86616b1931cbdae5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ? Date: 1997/08/05 Message-ID: <33E76711.6512@gsg.eds.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 262602283 References: <33D005F2.E5DCD710@kaiwan.com> <33D3EC6E.7920@gsg.eds.com> <33DD01FA.247D@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> <5rnige$5d1@portal.gmu.edu> <33E24422.181@gsg.eds.com> Reply-To: nospam@gsg.eds.com Organization: EDS MS Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-08-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert Dewar wrote: > > I don't think unnnecessary terseness was the issue here, but rather > the sacrifice of informal readability to precision and accuracy. There > were VERY rarely any arguments about what the defining document said > or meant, and very very few errors were found (though of course you > could argue that it was never widely used compared to say Ada). The lack of arguments tells nothing about whether the document was too terse. It does, of course, tell us that it was unambiguous. > But the definining document is no less accessible than say the COBOL > standard in my view, and had the advantage that implementors at least > could exactly understand what it said, and easily find anything they > wanted there. While I hate, loathe and despise COBOL, the original document from CODASYL defined its terms in an easily accessible fashion. > Yes, it required some effort to understand, but that > is true of any formal definition (by comparison, the Ada standard is > an informal definition at best). No, it is not true of any formal definition; only of definitions that are not properly annotated. The "vienna telephone directory" (reports on the Vienna Definition Language and it's use in defining PL/I) are quite formal, but they include enough annotation to guide the reader. > The problem is that formal definitions are indeed very much inaccessible > to those without the skills in reading documents of the type. My degree is in Mathematics. Papers in professional jounals are expected to be quite technical, but if you submitted a paper ot the AMS or the MAA with just mathematical formulae and no explanatory narrative, the editors would bounce it right back to you. > No amount > of informal explanation would have helped people to read the Algol-68 > RR if they did not have the necessary mathematical background to be > comfortable with a highly formal style of presentation. True, but irrelevant. No degree of mathematical background will make it easy to read text that is deliberately obscure. There is a difference between formal and turgid, and the ALGOL-68 report was far harder to read than other language documents that were every bit as formal. > > Indeed in the UK, Algol-68 was widely used, Indeed, I cited Eurepe in general when I disputed the claim that ALGOL 68 was dead. > Seymour said > > SPITBOL is basically SNOBOL 4 with a few minor things stripped out; it > is quite different from Icon. I understand that there is a SPITBOL for > the PC from Catspaw. > > Robert replies > > Not quite, they are dialects. Spitbol leaves out a couple of the most > dynamic features of SNOBOL4 that are rarely used (e.g. the ability > to distinguish between names and values dynamically in pathological > cases), AS I said, minor things. In my experience, students rarely needed the missing features and prefered SPITBOL over SNOBOL 4 due to the improved performance. BTW, is the Catspav version still available for the PC? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Senior Software SE The values in from and reply-to are for the benefit of spammers: reply to domain eds.com, user msustys1.smetz or to domain gsg.eds.com, user smetz.