Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Thomas Hood 913-4501]

I'm sure the Arcadia project at UC Irvine would _really_ interested in knowing
that ARPA doesn't want them to use Ada ;-)
-- 

Thomas Hood
hoodt@lfs.loral.com
-- Ada grunt since 1985
-- Member Team Ada since 1994
-- Member Team Human since 1965
--
-- My opinions are not those of my employers, and if they were I'd probably
-- reject them out of hand and form new ones.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Tarjei Jensen]

In article <37ecru$niq@news.manassas.ibm.com> hoodt@postoffice.manassas.ibm.com (Thomas Hood 913-4501) writes:

> I'm sure the Arcadia project at UC Irvine would _really_ interested in
> knowing that ARPA doesn't want them to use Ada ;-)

Much of the parts of that project seems to have been done in C. If they are
promoting Ada they have a strange way of showing it.

Disclaimer: I have not looked into all parts of the Arcadia project, but where
I looked I found only C.


Greetings,
  
  
--
// Tarjei T. Jensen - if it ain't broken, fix it anyway!
//    tarjeij@ulrik.uio.no       || +47 51 563411
//   Support you local rescue centre: GET LOST!
// Working, but not speaking for the Norwegian Hydrographic Service.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Charles Stump]

In article 94Oct12095039@ulrik.uio.no, tarjeij@ulrik.uio.no (Tarjei Jensen) writes:
>In article <37ecru$niq@news.manassas.ibm.com> hoodt@postoffice.manassas.ibm.com (Thomas Hood 913-4501) writes:
>
>> I'm sure the Arcadia project at UC Irvine would _really_ interested in
>> knowing that ARPA doesn't want them to use Ada ;-)
>
>Much of the parts of that project seems to have been done in C. If they are
>promoting Ada they have a strange way of showing it.
>
>Disclaimer: I have not looked into all parts of the Arcadia project, but where
>I looked I found only C.
>
>
>Greetings,
>  

Those parts of the project that I have used were all done in Ada.
I MIGHT have seen a little bit of C, but I do not think so.

---
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= Charles W. Stump II	= Leverage 		= Reverse Engineering, =
= 			= Technologists Inc.	= Reengineering, and   =
=			=			= Quality Engineering  =
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========================================================================

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Dennis Troup]

In article <TARJEIJ.94Oct12095039@ulrik.uio.no>,
Tarjei Jensen <tarjeij@ulrik.uio.no> wrote:
>In article <37ecru$niq@news.manassas.ibm.com> hoodt@postoffice.manassas.ibm.com (Thomas Hood 913-4501) writes:
>
>> I'm sure the Arcadia project at UC Irvine would _really_ interested in
>> knowing that ARPA doesn't want them to use Ada ;-)
>
>Much of the parts of that project seems to have been done in C. If they are
>promoting Ada they have a strange way of showing it.
>
>Disclaimer: I have not looked into all parts of the Arcadia project, but where
>I looked I found only C.

It's true that not all parts of the Arcadia project are written in Ada.
However, it is the primary language, or at least it was when I was there. 

I was one of the primary designers of the Arcadia user interface management
system, Chiron. It is written in a combination of Ada and C++. I chose to use
the languages which I felt worked best for the different parts of Chiron. I
didn't have to use Ada, rather I chose to use it. If Ada 9x was available
back then, Chiron would probably have been done entirely in Ada. C++ is used
within Chiron for its inheritance and classes which Ada 83 lacks.

Chiron, alone, has tens of thousands of lines of Ada. So, how hard did you
look? 

				Dennis Troup
-- 
Dennis B. Troup, Ph.D.                                       dtroup@netcom.com
Frederick, MD
301-620-8761                                                            KD6DPR

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Jason Elliot Robbins]

In article <37ecru$niq@news.manassas.ibm.com>,
Thomas Hood 913-4501 <hoodt@postoffice.manassas.ibm.com> wrote:
>I'm sure the Arcadia project at UC Irvine would _really_ interested in knowing
>that ARPA doesn't want them to use Ada ;-)

I cannot make any kind of official statement for the arcadia project,
by my feeling as to the direction of the group is that it is
interested in Ada and other languages. In fact, support for multiple
lanuages is a major goal of the next version of Chiron.

In fact, as noted by dennis, various arcadia tools have been in
various languages so far. And I only see the diversity increasing (of
course, it would be nearly impossible for it to _decrease_ :)

-jason

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Michael Feldman]

In article <37ecru$niq@news.manassas.ibm.com>,
Thomas Hood 913-4501 <hoodt@postoffice.manassas.ibm.com> wrote:
>I'm sure the Arcadia project at UC Irvine would _really_ interested in knowing
>that ARPA doesn't want them to use Ada ;-)

Hmmm - I don't really have much of an idea _what_ the Arcadia project
at UC Irvine is doing these days. Except for a very occasional netnote
announcing a new release of Aflex/Ayacc, Arcadia is one of the quietest
university-based projects I've ever seen (I'm not counting the secret
ones at University-sponsord labs like LIncoln and APL).

Can anyone at or around Arcadia give us a brief description of what's
been going on there lately? 

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Non illegitimi carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Arcadia

[Sandy Wise]

mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:

 > Can anyone at or around Arcadia give us a brief description of what's
 > been going on there lately? 

I do not speak for Arcadia, but I do work for it :-)

Arcadia is still going strong at all the sites (UC Irvine , UMASS, CU,
Purdue).  Information on Arcadia can be found on the web at:

        http://www.ics.uci.edu/Arcadia/

The UMass pages are currently very sparse -- but will be replaced with
new and better pages in the next few weeks...
        /s
--
Alexander Erskine Wise/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ WISE@CS.UMASS.EDU /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Kevin Priest~]

In article <37bph1$naq@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
[...]
>ARPA funds research, and that research uses a variety of languages for
>various purposes. 
[...]
>
>Certainly it is the case that quite a bit of the ARPA sponsored researchers
>are using C and C++. One important note here is that there are at least some
>cases I know of where those researchers would have preferred to use Ada (as
>being more suited to the task, not because it was mandated), but the lack of
>an available base technology that was freely available was a blocking
>obstacle. 

Do you remember what "base technology that was freely available" was
used by these researchers?  Based on your hope that GNAT will fill the
void for future Ada use, I infer they must have used something in the
GNU tool set, or something similar.

>
>We hope that GNAT will spread the use of Ada for research of various kinds,
>that is one of its major functions. At the same time, no one that I know of
>thinks that all advanced research should be done in Ada, or in C++ for that
>matter.
>
>Many of the ARPA people try to take a long term view, and the view I have
>often heard expressed is that languages like Ada (even Ada 9X), and C++
>(even the final version to be standardized) are languages from the past,
>and what they are interested in is technology of the future. For some
>appropriate time scale, this is very likely to be an accurate assessment!
>

I am unable to reconcile the following two positions:

1. ARPA funds research, tries to take a long term view, and is
interested in technology of the future.

2. ARPA-funded research using Ada has been hindered because there were not 
free tools available.

Why did not ARPA simply fund the purchase of Ada tools, given their
long-term view?  It seems incredibly short-sighted of a research
organization to reject a superior technical solution because they would
have to pay for the tools!  I'm sorry, Robert, but this defense of ARPA
simply doesn't wash.

--
Kevin R. Priest
kpriest@sedona.intel.com
The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Intel
Corporation (unless AMD tries to reverse engineer them). 

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Robert Dewar]

absolutely, the base technology I was referring to was in these particular
cases g++ (the GNU version of c++). I know of a couple efforts using g++
where I think that GNAT would at least have been considered if it had been
around!

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Tarjei Jensen]

In article <37eq7q$t5p@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

>   absolutely, the base technology I was referring to was in these particular
>   cases g++ (the GNU version of c++). I know of a couple efforts using g++
>   where I think that GNAT would at least have been considered if it had been
>   around!

It may sound silly to many people, but we have found that some of the free
software available is not cost effective. E.g. we pay for the DEC C++ (or C
cludge, cludge as I prefer to pronounce it) compiler instead of using the GNU
C++ compiler. The reason is simply that the DEC product is better at catching
errors and generates correct code.

What I am trying to get accross is that it might be worth paying hundreds or
even thousands of dollars for a product if it works better than something that
is free. With that perspective free migth be too expensive.

So choosing C++ instead of Ada might be viewed as as mismanagement of research
funds. However I won't deny anybody the right to spend their time debugging
instead of researching/programming.


Greetings,
 
 
--
// Tarjei T. Jensen - if it ain't broken, fix it anyway!
//    tarjeij@ulrik.uio.no       || +47 51 563411
//   Support you local rescue centre: GET LOST!
// Working, but not speaking for the Norwegian Hydrographic Service.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Robert Dewar]

A couple of points in response To Tarjei's note.

First, I was talking about research projects where it is aboslutely vital
to have full access to the sources, because the whole point of the project
is to make language extensions etc to test out some research theory. That's
a different world from the world of mission critical applications.

Second, the free in free software means freely available, not free in $$$.
Now of course you can pick up a copy of any FSF software free, but as many
people point out, the lack of guaranteed maintenance etc. may mean that
the software is unusable, and $0 is not necessarily a good price for something
you can't use. One motto of Cygnus Corp is "we make free software affordable",
and this nicely goes to the heart of things. If you need to use free software
on a mission critical project, you need to think about maintenance costs.
You can maintain the software yourself (an option not available with
proprietary products), or probably more practical in most cases, you can
pay someone else to maintain it. That's what companies like Cygnus are
all about.

As to whether a particular piece of free software competes well technically
with some particular piece of proprietary software, that has to be judged
on a case by case basis. It would be a mistake to understand from Tarjei's
comment that proprietary software is always superior in all cases to free
software. That's just not so, there are lots of people and projects that
choose to use free software because it is the best technical choice for the
job (indeed there are systems, like Nextstep, where the vendor themselves
has decided that GCC is the best available compiler, and thus it is the
only one available).

It is equally silly for anyone to maintain that in all cases free software
is better than proprietary software. That's also clearly not so.

THe basic point is that, as I have stressed before, you should choose the
best tool for the job. If the best tool is free software fine, if the best
tool is proprietary software fine, that's just part of the normal
selection process.

In making this decision, you naturally take into account the extent to
which the availablility of sources affects your project, and as I mentioned,
for a pure research project this may be decisive, much morwe important than
cost considerations.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Richard Kenner]

In article <37gn4u$ljj@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>As to whether a particular piece of free software competes well technically
>with some particular piece of proprietary software, that has to be judged
>on a case by case basis. It would be a mistake to understand from Tarjei's
>comment that proprietary software is always superior in all cases to free
>software. That's just not so, there are lots of people and projects that
>choose to use free software because it is the best technical choice for the
>job (indeed there are systems, like Nextstep, where the vendor themselves
>has decided that GCC is the best available compiler, and thus it is the
>only one available).

I've long complained to the G++ folks that the lack of quality of G++
is an embarassment to the FSF and GNU project.  Please don't take this
as an example of typical FSF software.  emacs and GCC (not including
G++) are better examples.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Michael Feldman]

In article <37gnv0$j5u@cmcl2.nyu.edu>,
Richard Kenner <kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:
>
>I've long complained to the G++ folks that the lack of quality of G++
>is an embarassment to the FSF and GNU project.  Please don't take this
>as an example of typical FSF software.  emacs and GCC (not including
>G++) are better examples.

In his talk at TRI-Ada 92, Richard Stallman said very publicly and
unambiguously that he didn't like C++. If he's just tolerating it,
that may explain why g++ is not getting the proper attention.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Non illegitimi carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Richard Kenner]

In article <37u1h3$hpd@felix.seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
>In his talk at TRI-Ada 92, Richard Stallman said very publicly and
>unambiguously that he didn't like C++. If he's just tolerating it,
>that may explain why g++ is not getting the proper attention.

I don't think that's fair.  G++ was originally written by one of the
founders of Cygnus (while he was at MCC) and is being maintained by
Cygnus.  The problems with G++ are technical; RMS wouldn't have
had the time to be personally involved even if he had a more favorable
attitude towards the C++ language.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Jay Martin]

So what language does Stallman like?  Surely it is not brain-dead crap
like C,LISP and UNIX.  Inquiring minds want to know! Jay

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[John M. Mills]

In article <37uif1$i27@oahu.cs.ucla.edu>,
Jay Martin <jmartin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
 >So what language does Stallman like?  Surely it is not brain-dead crap
 >like C,LISP and UNIX.  Inquiring minds want to know! Jay

I don't pretend to speak for Mr. Stallman, but I thought emacs was written
in Lisp. Does that suggest anything?

Merely curious minds want to know what unites 'C,LISP and UNIX' ??
Regards --jmm--

-- 
John M. Mills, SRE -- john.m.mills@gtri.gatech.edu -- (404)528-3258 (voice)
   Georgia Tech/ GTRI/ SDL, 7220 Richardson Rd., Smyrna, GA 30080
   "Well, I'm an Assistant Regurgitation Engineer --
     but I should make Senior R.E. next year" _The_Far_Side_, G. Larson

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Richard Kenner]

In article <37v9eu$dij@siberia.gatech.edu> jmills@ccrf-news.gatech.edu (John M. Mills) writes:
>I don't pretend to speak for Mr. Stallman, but I thought emacs was written
>in Lisp. Does that suggest anything?

I don't think any version of emacs was written in Lisp.

The original version of emacs was written in TECO and GNU emacs is
written in C.  There may have been a version in between that was
written in Lisp, but I doubt it.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Kevin Cline]

In article <37v9eu$dij@siberia.gatech.edu>, jmills@ccrf-news.gatech.edu (John M. Mills) writes:
|> In article <37uif1$i27@oahu.cs.ucla.edu>,
|> Jay Martin <jmartin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
|>  >So what language does Stallman like?  Surely it is not brain-dead crap
|>  >like C,LISP and UNIX.  Inquiring minds want to know! Jay
|> 
|> I don't pretend to speak for Mr. Stallman, but I thought emacs was written
|> in Lisp. Does that suggest anything?
|> 
Emacs is written in both C and LISP.  The basic functionality (file I/O,
screen management, buffer manipulation, searching, etc) is written in
C for speed.  Emacs also includes a C implementation of a LISP interpreter.
The high-level functionality is written in LISP to allow maximum customization
by users.  This works; LSE's for many languages have been written for Emacs.

Kevin Cline

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Richard Kenner]

In article <37uif1$i27@oahu.cs.ucla.edu> jmartin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin) writes:
>So what language does Stallman like?  Surely it is not brain-dead crap
>like C,LISP and UNIX.  Inquiring minds want to know! Jay

Stallman is an old Lisp hacker.  He now writes in C.

His favorate operating system is GNU, which of course, is Not Unix.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Robert Dewar]

[languages like] C, Lisp and Unix   

                             |
   error: type mismatch, expected language, found operating system!

Richard Stallman writes primarily in GNU C, although clearly he works with
Lisp too in the EMACS context!

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760]

intros@cscns.com (Introspect Technologies) writes

 > Jay Martin (jmartin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu) wrote:
 > : So what language does Stallman like?  Surely it is not brain-dead crap
 > : like C,LISP and UNIX.  Inquiring minds want to know! Jay
 > 
 > He was asked this question point blank at an evening session of TriAda '92
 > and answered that Lisp was his favorite because it was "elegant". 
 > (Caveat: I don't know if this is still how he feels.)
 > 
 > RMS was quite contemptuous of C++ in his remarks.  He felt that C++ had
 > some serious deficiencies.  G++ included some "fixes" but if the user
 > wanted "standard" C++ features, they could invoke the "BS" switch.  RMS
 > said that he had expressed his concerns to Bjarne but was told "If you
 > think you can do it better, go ahead".  (Caveat: see above.)

That description does not square with my recollection.

After a talk I gave a long time ago (8 or 10 years ago, I think)
at some Californian university, a wild looking guy walked up to
me wrote half a dozen suggested changes to C++ on the blackboard
and demanded (not suggested) I adopt them. I don't recall details
but all suggestions related to the C part of C++ and most to the
then rather incomplete C standards effort. I started to describe
an experiment I had conducted with the first idea listed (what
was later called auto-prototyping when Walter Bright from Zortech
re-invented it) and what responses I had had from people trying
it out. The guy yelled ``I had not expected such a hostile reaction!''
did some strange gestures with his arms and hands, and walked off.

I was somewhat startled by this unusual behavior - that is why I
remember the conversation. People who had been standing around
listening told me that that the guy was Richard Stallman. That
didn't enlighten me because I'd never the name before. After that,
I have never had a technical discussion with him.

It is not inherently improbable that I would have muttered something
to the effect that if he didn't like C++ he could go design his own
language - it would be a rather mild statement from a young researcher
to someone demanding changes to his work while showing disdain for
technical issues and the results of experiments - but I recall nothing
of the sort. I doubt the whole exchange lasted five minutes.

Why do I bother commenting? After all, what rms and I said or didn't
say to each other back in the dark ages can be of little interest today.
However, the myths that seems to sourround every programming language
tend to obscure the language itself to people with only casual acquaintance
with it, and are seldom helpful to anyone. Sometimes - far too rarely -
facts help avoid myths caused by random guessing about the reasons
various things are the way they are.

	- Bjarne

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Introspect Technologies]

Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760 (bs@research.att.com) wrote:

: intros@cscns.com (Introspect Technologies) writes

:  > Jay Martin (jmartin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu) wrote:
:  > : So what language does Stallman like?  Surely it is not brain-dead crap
:  > : like C,LISP and UNIX.  Inquiring minds want to know! Jay
:  > 
:  > [snip]
:  > RMS was quite contemptuous of C++ in his remarks.  He felt that C++ had
:  > some serious deficiencies.  G++ included some "fixes" but if the user
:  > wanted "standard" C++ features, they could invoke the "BS" switch.  RMS
:  > said that he had expressed his concerns to Bjarne but was told "If you
:  > think you can do it better, go ahead".  (Caveat: see above.)

: That description does not square with my recollection.

: [more snip]... I doubt the whole exchange lasted five minutes.

: Why do I bother commenting? After all, what rms and I said or didn't
: say to each other back in the dark ages can be of little interest today.
: However, the myths that seems to sourround every programming language
: tend to obscure the language itself to people with only casual acquaintance
: with it, and are seldom helpful to anyone. Sometimes - far too rarely -
: facts help avoid myths caused by random guessing about the reasons
: various things are the way they are.

: 	- Bjarne

Thanks for commenting.  I've often wondered what the exchange was really 
like.  There are always (at least) two perspectives to any event and, for 
the reasons you state, your perspective is valuable in helping the rest 
of us comprehend the dynamics of our computer community.

Douglas Arndt (member, Team Ada!)
Introspect Technologies, Inc.
PO Box 1135
Colorado Springs, CO  80901-1135
(719) 634-5744
(719) 634-1163 fax
intros@usa.net

--

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Richard G. Hash]

In <Cy5nxM.pn@research.att.com> bs@research.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760) writes:
>  > RMS was quite contemptuous of C++ in his remarks.  He felt that C++ had
>  > some serious deficiencies.  G++ included some "fixes" but if the user
>  > wanted "standard" C++ features, they could invoke the "BS" switch.  RMS
>  > said that he had expressed his concerns to Bjarne but was told "If you
>  > think you can do it better, go ahead".  (Caveat: see above.)
> 
> That description does not square with my recollection.
> 	- Bjarne

Perhaps you are meaning the "description" of your alleged remark -
but the the original posters description of the RMS Tri-Ada remarks
are bang-on-the-dot (there were probably a thousand folks there,
expecting an anti-Ada tirade, only to find someone who said "I think
Ada is Pascal with all the problems fixed, it's pretty nice", and
who left disappointed they didn't get to hear a good tirade).

--
Richard G. Hash                                      email: rgh@shell.com
Shell Development Company, Bellaire Research Center  phone: (713) 245-7311
Member Team Ada                Free Ada94 compilers: cs.nyu.edu:/pub/gnat

RMS's response to "Re: ARPA still undermining Ada"

[Richard Kenner]

In article <Cy5nxM.pn@research.att.com> bs@research.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760) writes:
>That description does not square with my recollection.
>
>After a talk I gave a long time ago (8 or 10 years ago, I think)
>at some Californian university, a wild looking guy walked up to
>me wrote half a dozen suggested changes to C++ on the blackboard
>and demanded (not suggested) I adopt them.  ... The guy yelled
>``I had not expected such a hostile reaction!'' did some strange gestures
>with his arms and hands, and walked off.
>
>I was somewhat startled by this unusual behavior - that is why I
>remember the conversation. People who had been standing around
>listening told me that that the guy was Richard Stallman. 

I forwarded this to RMS and here's what he had to say:

[I asked kenner to post this for me because I don't do netnews
myself.]

Today I received a forwarded news posting by Stroustrup, and read that
I had "demanded (not suggested)" certain changes in C++.  I think I
should say what actually did happen.

When I met Stroustrup, I had been concerned for some time about
certain minor aspects of the grammar of C++ which cause major
practical problems (ambiguity and gratuitous incompatibility with C).
These particular grammar points don't contribute anything to the
salient features of C++ because they are too minor.

I considered these serious problems and I was glad to have a chance to
talk to Stroustrup about them.

I did not, however, make a demand.  I expected he would share my
concern about the problems.  I expected he would do something about
them, not because I said so, but because it would be good for the
users.

I believed firmly in the importance of solving these problems.
Stroustrup may have mistaken firmness of belief for a demand.

But Stroustrup did not regard gratuitous incompatibility and ambiguous
grammar as problems and had no interest in these changes.  I went away
and decided not to use C++, at least in its current form.

I considered implementing a cleaned up version of C++ syntax myself,
with a -bs option to select the Bjarne Stroustrup syntax.  I spoke
about this idea at Tri-Ada.  But I never implemented this--I was too
busy with other things.

It may be too late now to consider changing these things.  But if you
*want to do the work* of implementing a rationalized C++, please
contact me, and I'll try to remember the issues which I've had several
years to forget.  At least it would be fun to have an excuse to have
an option named -bs.

(Please don't ask if you aren't prepared to do the work--I don't want
to spend time discussing these grammar issues unless it does practical
good.)

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Michael Feldman]

In article <37ui4p$rd4@cmcl2.nyu.edu>,
Richard Kenner <kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:
>In article <37u1h3$hpd@felix.seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
>>In his talk at TRI-Ada 92, Richard Stallman said very publicly and
>>unambiguously that he didn't like C++. If he's just tolerating it,
>>that may explain why g++ is not getting the proper attention.
>
>I don't think that's fair.  G++ was originally written by one of the
>founders of Cygnus (while he was at MCC) and is being maintained by
>Cygnus.  The problems with G++ are technical; RMS wouldn't have
>had the time to be personally involved even if he had a more favorable
>attitude towards the C++ language.

OK, thanks for the clarification.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Non illegitimi carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Mark C. Chu-Carroll]

In article <37egd5$2vt@chnews.intel.com> kpriest@hopi.intel.com (Kevin Priest~) writes:
>
>I am unable to reconcile the following two positions:
>
>1. ARPA funds research, tries to take a long term view, and is
>interested in technology of the future.
>
>2. ARPA-funded research using Ada has been hindered because there were not 
>free tools available.
>
>Why did not ARPA simply fund the purchase of Ada tools, given their
>long-term view?  It seems incredibly short-sighted of a research
>organization to reject a superior technical solution because they would
>have to pay for the tools!  I'm sorry, Robert, but this defense of ARPA
>simply doesn't wash.

I don't see the difficulty.

When you start a research project, you generally look at what tools
you have available for that research project. That has a huge
influence.

To give an example, I'm a grad student working on a programming
language research project. When I started, we decided that we wanted
to work on parallel programming tools for general purpose parallel
programming. So we started looking for languages to use as a basis for
our work.

In our choice of a base language to work with, there were a number of
factors:

<1> We wanted a language that was actually used by people for
  general purpose programming - particularly using non-array based
  data structures.

<2> We wanted a language with strong typing.

<3> We wanted a languge with good modularity.

So far, it sounds like Ada would be an ideal choice, even if GNAT weren't
available.

But:

<4> We wanted a language where we had access to the source code for
  a compiler. We didn't want to have to rewrite all of the parsing
  and semantic analysis for the base language.

Now, even if you gave us a commercial compiler *for free*, we would
never have chosen Ada - because it would involve far too much effort
just to implement the analysis of the base language.

That kind of thing happens often in research - if you want to do
language work involving extensions of a base language, you really need
to have access to the source code of an implementation of the base
language. Before GNAT, there was no freely available source code to a
complete Ada compiler. And that, essentially, made Ada an unrealistic
choice for a lot of language work.

(As it turns out, we aren't using Ada. We discovered another research
project taking a *very* similar approach to ours, and decided that we
needed to change our direction slightly - so we decided to move more
into a more dynamic language, like CLOS.)

	<MC>
-- 

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Robert Dewar]

Mark, I couldn't agree more that it would have made sense for ARPA to fund
a GNAT-like effort earlier. I flew down to Washington a couple of times
a few years ago (i.e. several years before the GNAT work finally started)
to try to sell this idea, but it didn't fly. We have Chris Anderson to
thank for finally seeing that this was an important target of opportunity.

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Michael Feldman]

In article <37ib3r$314@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Mark, I couldn't agree more that it would have made sense for ARPA to fund
>a GNAT-like effort earlier. I flew down to Washington a couple of times
>a few years ago (i.e. several years before the GNAT work finally started)
>to try to sell this idea, but it didn't fly. We have Chris Anderson to
>thank for finally seeing that this was an important target of opportunity.
>

Yes indeed. I was, of course, well outside all those discussions,
but to this outsider's eyes, this was an inspired and courageous move
on Chris Anderson's part. To this day, some of the Ada vendors complain
about GNAT as "unfair competition." Clearly those vendors have no clue
about what it really takes to build grass roots support for a language
and get it widely propagated.

A full-bore implementation of Ada/Ed (with some tools, maybe even
a code generator or two, and some support for ongoing maintenance)
would, IMHO, have made a big difference if it had happened, say,
around 1989 or so. 

And speaking of Arcadia/UCI, I don't think it's ever been explained
why work on their very nice Ada interpretive environment, Arcturus, was
stopped just when it seemed to be on the verge of research and
educational usefulness. I assume it was a change in direction of the
ARPA sponsors, but then one wants to ask _why_. That would have been
a dynamite system.

A similar system, ACE (Ada Compilation Environment) was done by
(I guess) Unisys (or whatever they were called at the time) as a
STARS project, also ARPA-funded, and _that_ was halted just as it was
about to be useful for similar purposes. No public statement has ever
been made on the reason for this. Is it part of the ARPA ideology
to see these projects through to the 90% point and hen cut them off?

There's a _lot_ of potentially good stuff that was allowed to wither
for lack of sustained support.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Non illegitimi carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Robert Dewar]

Actually Mike, I think a "full-bore" version of Ada-Ed could have appeared
significantly before 1989 if the support had been there for such an 
effort.

I first started talking about the idea of a GCC-like effort for Ada quite
a bit earlier than 1989!

Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[Michael Feldman]

In article <380tov$hlh@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu>,
Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Actually Mike, I think a "full-bore" version of Ada-Ed could have appeared
>significantly before 1989 if the support had been there for such an 
>effort.
>
>I first started talking about the idea of a GCC-like effort for Ada quite
>a bit earlier than 1989!
>
That's all the sadder. Too bad the Powers that Be were not really
understanding what it took to propagate a language. I do think that
your efforts must have been pretty quiet, though; at least nobody I
was speaking to at the time around the academic world knew about it.
Perhaps some more concerted lobbying might have gotten the message
across to AJPO or whoever it was you were speaking to.

I suppose the vendors would have screamed bloody murder then, too.
Oh well, it's all water under the bridge now.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Non illegitimi carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------