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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,54889de51045a215 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-22 04:56:49 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F967078.20204@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: += in ada References: <1066224357.499523@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1066231159.711433@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1066311805.222491@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F8F3077.60402@comcast.net> <3F900F35.50203@comcast.net> <3F952A59.5090001@noplace.com> <3F954670.8080004@comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 11:56:48 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.247.65.94 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1066823808 165.247.65.94 (Wed, 22 Oct 2003 04:56:48 PDT) mcondic@mindspring.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 04:56:48 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1407 Date: 2003-10-22T11:56:48+00:00 List-Id: Well, one of the things that was done right with Ada95 was developing Gnat and making sure it was out there in Open Source. That gave people something that they could use right away and, if the need was there, could modify for their own particular targets, etc. Had Ada83 followed some similar route, it might have met with more success. In some ways, I think Ada83 could have succeeded much better if it had only been turned into Ada85 - delayed a couple of years to let hardware and compiler technology catch up. A descent quality compiler that was publically available for some popular and inexpensive platform would have gone a *LOT* further back then to help make the language more popular. If the DoD had delayed the standard until such a prototype compiler could have been released with it, I think that lots of people would have tried it and liked it. One thing to remember is that back then, compilers in general were still pretty expensive and hobbyists were just starting to find things like Borland Pascal available. Their hardware was pretty small - hard disks were quite expensive and lots of systems only had floppies. I knew there were lots of people back then who were excited about Ada and would have loved to try it out - perhaps building a lot of the software that would have made it more successful - but they were basically frozen out of it initially and even when it started to be more practical, the quality was poor and sooner or later the discouragement set in and people started wandering off to other more accessible technology. On the up-side, I noticed that there were a hundred-thirty-something posts to CLA this morning - a pretty big number. Maybe it reflects some increased interest in Ada? Or is it all just a flurry of thrusts-jabs-ripostes by the usual suspects? ;-) MDC Robert I. Eachus wrote: > Incidently, I now know enough that I would instead of pages of detailed > comments on the proposals I would have made one comment. "Develop the > compiler, then award the contract for the APSE. Otherwise you will be > doomed to failure." As it is/was, no viable APSE was ever developed > back then, although some decent development systems have shown up since. > > At MITRE in the 1980s we had a standard of comparison for all the > proposed APSEs. We compared them to Verdix Ada, SunOS, emacs, and > decent support for e-mail. We never added NFS (network file system) to > that list becuase no proposed APSE ever measured up--and the actual > implementations were always worse. > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================