Re: The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture The Emperor's Old Clothes

[Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org>]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> Lyle McKennot wrote:
> >
> > How about the  1980 ACM Turing Award lecture "The Emperor's Old
> > Clothes" ?
> 
> The main problem with that is that Ada was not finalized until 1985.
> Hoare's comments were made about a very preliminary version of the
> language. Not only did Ada get 5 more years of development after that,
> but it then got a major revision in 1995. So that lecture isn't at all
> about the language we today know as Ada.

I would like to dispel some misinformation here. Hoare's comments were
about a draft version of Ada 80, which was essentially unused even after
the final version (MIL-STD-1815) was produced in 1980 Dec. Recognizing
many problems with the language definition, including some addressed by
Hoare and many obtained from a public comment effort, the design team
revised the language, resulting in Ada 83 (ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A) in 1983
Feb. Ada 83 was and is widely used. This standard was accepted unchanged
as an ISO standard in 1987. The standard was again revised in 1995,
giving the current Ada, Ada 95.

So, Hoare's comments have nothing to do with the language we today call
Ada. Ada wasn't finalized in 1985, 1983, or even 1995, since an effort
is currently underway to revise the standard again.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Go and boil your bottoms."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail