Re: The Red Language

[munck@mindspring.com (Robert Munck)]

On Thu, 04 Sep 1997 11:38:00 -0400, "Dean F. Sutherland"
<dfsuther@ux4.sp.cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

>We used a descendent of Red as our main implementation language at
>Tartan in the mid-80s. ... Gnal ... Tartan was named in honor of
>the company's roots at Carnegie-Mellon.

I stand corrected.  I was thinking of a language design called
"Tartan" that was done in answer to the four colored design
proposals.  The name that comes to mind is Mary Shaw (and wasn't
she at CMU then?) but I'm not sure about that.  (I do remember
where the report was on the shelves of the SofTech library some
two decades ago.)

Tartan was done as a protest of the complexity of the four 
bespoke designs.  It was much simpler; the specification was
about 1/20th as thick as the others (I know, that's not a very
good measure of language complexity).  It was said to be compliant
with Steelman, a claim I was unqualified to evaluate.  (I do
remember John Goodenough saying that our (SofTech's) design
(Blue?) came closer to meeting that goal than did Green or either
of the others, and that we should have been a bit less fanatical
about Steelman.  Hey, how does Ada95 do against Steelman?  It
might be interesting to hear in what major ways Ada95 violates
the old requirements.)

Bob Munck
Mill Creek Systems LC