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 21:47:01 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: <3F975D3C.7050804@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: 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> <3F96788C.5020309@noplace.com> <3F96E2C6.6010708@comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 04:47:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.247.65.179 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1066884421 165.247.65.179 (Wed, 22 Oct 2003 21:47:01 PDT) mcondic@mindspring.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 21:47:01 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1486 Date: 2003-10-23T04:47:01+00:00 List-Id: Yea, there was the "Pascal-Like Subset" that was a starting point for a lot of vendors, but a) it wasn't any kind of approved, validated standard, so you couldn't be sure of any kind of portability (every vendor had their own rules about what they were going to implement) and b) there were things that had to be included that were way off of the standard in order to make it work. The most obvious was Text_IO: You couldn't do I/O for anything except text (numeric types, enumerations, etc.) without generic instantiation and, as you observed, that was the "Level 2" part. So compilers had to come up with some sort of hack-job to give you I/O for floats, integers, etc., without having generics. Double-Plus-Ungood for developing anything you hoped to make portable. I realize it all got fixed eventually, but it *did* leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of users. Ada was supposed to be this wonderful language that was going to be portable across all machines and all compilers - but the wonderful parts were not there and the portability was no better - perhaps worse - than your average Fortran or C compiler. Disillusionment followed rapidly. Even today, I think there might be some food-value in a "standard" subset that would be aimed at small embedded machines. (Assuming anyone wants to try to venture into that market again.) Spark might make a nice start - except that it isn't a "Standard". I don't know enough about Spark to know if it limits itself to things that would hack the language down to something easily targeted to small embedded machines. It just might be valuable to have something that could easily fit a small target. MDC Robert I. Eachus wrote: > > There were actually two, pretty well understood by all compiler > developers. The first was the Pascal subset, this was basically > everything in Ada that was also in Pascal. A lot of compiler developers > either modified a Pascal compiler to compile this subset, or built a > tool to convert from the Pascal subset of Ada into Pascal. > > The next step up was the Pascal superset. This was basically everything > in Ada except chapters 9 (Tasking), 12 (Generics) and most of 13. This > was the language that most compiler developers used--and possibly still > do--to implement the Ada run-time. Of course, a lot of people would say > that some compilers, such as the original Telesoft compiler were only > useable with the Pascal superset. I am not one of them. I never found > the original Telesoft compiler useable. But then again, maybe I never > found the right Pascal subset to use with it. > -- ====================================================================== 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 ======================================================================