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: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: Jay Martin Subject: Re: Is there a language that Dijkstra liked? (was: Re: Software landmines (loops)) Date: 1998/10/09 Message-ID: <361DBC60.C153BBAD@earthlink.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 399281841 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$1@news.indigo.ie> <35FFE58C.5727@ibm.net> <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk> <6ts1q0$vo2$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-ELN-Date: Fri Oct 9 00:35:16 1998 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-10-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Matthew Heaney wrote: > > dewarr@my-dejanews.com writes: > > > In article <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk>, > > Markus Kuhn wrote: > > > > > 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. > > > > Perhaps you are talking about AH's Turing address, which > > certainly did not "kill interest on Ada in the academic > > community" [after all at least two major Ada vendors playing > > today have their roots in academic research efforts]. AH did > > also write a nice forward for a book by Brian Wichman. > > I have to disagree with you, Robert. It is my opinion that it was > Hoare's Turing Award speech that single-handedly derailed the Ada > language effort. He essentially argued that by using Ada, "the fate of > mankind" was at stake. > > People listened to him. Lots of people listened to him. To this day, > people still quote the Hoare speech (among them, Bertrand Meyer) in > order to back up their own criticisms of Ada. (The argument goes > something like, "See, Tony Hoare said Ada was bad, so it must be so.") Who or what has the power to make a language popular in this field? I don't see CS computer language academics anywhere close to the driver seat. In fact, I don't even think that software engineering language design is a viable academic field. It seems to me that most of CS even scoffs at software engineering, let alone SE language design. CS academia doesn't really care about programming, thus academia just follows industry or whatever is available. So, academia being apathetic to the whole question, didn't really care what Hoare said (not their field). I don't think industry takes what crackpot academics say seriously, thus I don't think they cared what Hoare said. IMO Ada died because: -- A lot of programmers scoff at anything the miltary does and the whole defense industry. In fact, defense workers are high tech lepers. -- Ada compilers were late, buggy, slow, too expensive, no libraries, .... -- Ada was not C, thus perceived worthless for Unix and Windows. -- Mismanagement by the DOD. -- No hyped technology that it could be piggybacked on. (Like C, Java) -- Winning cold war sucked most of the life out of the defense field. So it was more like "Ada sucks! and ... this Hoare guys says so too!". Jay