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 05:31:17 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: <3F96788C.5020309@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: Early Ada Mistakes (was: 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> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:31:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.247.65.94 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1066825877 165.247.65.94 (Wed, 22 Oct 2003 05:31:17 PDT) mcondic@mindspring.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 05:31:17 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1413 Date: 2003-10-22T12:31:17+00:00 List-Id: Wes Groleau wrote: > Marin David Condic wrote: > >> which to run the compilers and nobody was willing to "subset" the >> language to get some portion of it working reliably & efficiently >> in a > > Janus was willing. I had a copy runnable on a CP/M 64 K machine. > Never did anything with it. > I owned one of those too for a PC. Also the Telesoft compiler. Both couldn't figure out how to get generics implemented, so they ended up with butt-ugly, non-portable kludges in order to make something vaguely resembling Text_IO work. Eventually, this got fixed, but, as I observed, it put people off and made them believe that all the promises were just hype - that Ada *was* just to big and complicated and inefficient and would never meet its promises of portability. BTW, I liked the RR product, so please don't throw stones at me Randy! However, I don't have anything nice to say about Telesoft - mostly for bad business practices - so those guys are free to go pile sand. Except they don't exist anymore. Wonder why? ;-) As for subsets - that was viewed as heresy at the time. Nobody official wanted to sanction a subset and most of the potential users didn't seem to want there to be one. In point of fact, subsets got made anyway, but there was no "conventional" subset anyone could count on and there were non-portabilities (as I observed with Text_IO). This ought to be a "Lesson Learned" - if the vendors are going to end up doing it anyway, then its better to accommodate it in some manner so it gets done in a *standard* way. I thought it would be A Good Thing(tm) had there been some kind of semi-official subset that could have been validated so that a compiler might have been "Level 1 Compliant". That may have let compiler writers come out with something that would have met the needs of us guys with really small target processors and/or inexpensive home computers. We would have been able to play the game and do so in a way that was "Portable". As technology improved, vendors might have more easily become "Level 2 Compliant" and customers could have upgraded as their hardware grew to meet the needs. But that's all 20/20 hindsight. Perhaps if we get to have *another* DoD mandated programming language.... :-) > >> The value of strong typing in particular was not seen as "user >> friendly". They tried to write "Adatran" code and found it >> difficult. So > > > And people on the other extreme, who thought that just because the > language offered something, you had to use it. > Yup. You still see that today and not just with Ada. People go off and take a course and get all hyped up about some particular set of features and have to run off and make use of each and every one in their first program. We still occasionally see religious wars here over the use of standard ("Predefined" - Sorry Robert.) Integer and Float types. Some folks believe it is morally wrong under any circumstances *not* to define your own types for every conceivable use. Others are more lax about it. I'm in the "Others" category, but I did learn a lesson about not using the predefined type Integer in an embedded machine where later, when we needed to meet requirements to guarantee saturation on overflows, I was unable to override the "+" (etc) operators. Had I defined my own integer type, I could have done this. Fortunately, it wasn't too hard to review the code and determine that we were O.K. without it & get waivers from the requirement. > I remember one program that had 26 tasks when given to me. When I > was done with it, it had five, and still met all its requirements. > I recall one that was built by the Special Olympics Software Development Team at a company that shall remain nameless. They had been sent off to Object Oriented Programming School (on the Short Bus) and came back and turned *everything* into a task. As well you can imagine, this complicated analysis of program behavior immensely. It could have been done a hell of a lot simpler, but, well, they *were* the Special Olympics Software Development Team. :-) MDC -- ====================================================================== 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 ======================================================================