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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: Is there a language that Dijkstra liked? (was: Re: Software landmines (loops)) Date: 1998/09/17 Message-ID: <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 392008391 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <6rf59b$2ud$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6rfra4$rul$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <35DBDD24.D003404D@calfp.co.uk> <6sbuod$fra$1@hirame.wwa.com> <904556531.666222@miso.it.uq.edu.au> <6sgror$je8$3@news.indigo.ie> <6sh3qn$9p2$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6simjo$jnh$1@hirame.wwa.com> <35eeea9b.2174586@news.erols.com> <6sjj7n$3rr$1@hirame.wwa.com> <35f055a5.1431187@news.erols.com> <6sjnlu$83l$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6skfs7$2s6$1@hirame.wwa.com> <35F252DD.5187538@earthlink.net> <6t4dge$t8u$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6t5mtp$4ho$1@news.indigo.ie> <35FFE58C.5727@ibm.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Cambridge University, Computer Laboratory Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-09-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Rick Smith wrote: > Of the comments attributed to Dijkstra, I have never heard a comment > that was favorable toward any language! Is there a language that Dijkstra > liked? I thought that Dijkstra wrote years after his famous criticism on Ada, which basically killed interest on Ada in the academic community for many years, a quite nice foreword for an Ada 83 textbook by Jean Ichiba. I guess, his aversion against Ada were softened once he saw what monsters more recent languages such as C++ have become, compared to which Ada in Dijkstra's criteria should be a very nice language. I never understood his criticism that Ada is much too complex, and attribute it just to his inexperience with language specifications written down as ISO standards, because today even the C 9X standard is longer and much more difficult to read than the Ada standard. If you doubt that, get it from and read the definition of C's "restrict" type qualifier!!! I would like to see Dijkstra's comments on C 9X and then a comparison with Ada. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK email: mkuhn at acm.org, home page: