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=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,984e922902f4f4ee X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Larry Elmore Subject: Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ? Date: 1997/10/25 Message-ID: <3451FB80.CA0179F1@montana.campus.mci.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 284888334 References: <3446D9AB.3A14@erols.com> <3451A98F.B3DFF971@sd.aonix.com> X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Corel-MessageType: EMail Organization: montana.edu Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-10-25T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dave Wood wrote: > 4. The AmigaOS was written in (I think) B, or BPL, > or something like that. The OS was quite wonderful > and well ahead of its time as a desktop OS. Didn't > do much for the underlying language, though. As I recall, the kernel was written in BCPL, which was a cousin of C, I think (both derived from B?). The windowing system and other outer layers were written in C. (I think the kernel was written in England while the rest was done in America) I seem to remember having to worry about the order in which parameters were passed to OS calls--one way for those parts having been written in C and reverse order for those parts written in BCPL. Of course, I was using Forth with OO extensions on the Amiga, so maybe I had to deal with things C programmers didn't, and it has been a few years... Certainly the Amiga was a fantastic little machine, and I might have stuck with it for home use if Commodore hadn't been suicidally stupid about the whole thing. Actually, Commodore was _so_ stupid that sometimes I really wondered if key elements of their corporate management weren't secretly on IBM's payroll... > No, I rather think what made C popular was not the fact that Unix was > written in it, per se, but > rather that Unix and C were free and further that > they were widely used in academia. C appeals to > bitheads, hackers, and (dubious) academics, who > after all are the dominant computing species > almost by definition. Being part of an open system > and surrounded by all those little hacker tools > with cute bithead names (awk!!) oddly enough > helped rather than hurt. Perfect combination > to flourish in an academic environment. > > Ada will never be C because, well, Ada is not C. > It shares C's power and utility, but not its > essential bithead/ hacker characteristics. On > the other hand, Ada's essential characteristics > can provide a competitive edge to the brave and > wise minority who choose to use it. > > I don't think that's such a bad thing. When I was first (involuntarily) exposed to Ada, I _really_ disliked it. Too big, too verbose, too nitpicky and anal... I'm a convert, though. I still prefer Forth for small personal projects (it's just plain _fun_), but I would _vastly_ prefer Ada over C or C++ for any non-trivial project! Larry