Ada explanation?

Ada explanation?

[Bob Wells #402]

G'day,
I was just browsing around the WWW when I came upon "The Free
On-Line Dictionary of Computing." I looked up Ada and found the
following. Perhaps we can give a bit better explanation to the
maintainer of the dictionary.

The dictionary's URL is http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/

Bob W.

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Ada

A Pascal-descended language, designed by Jean Ichbiah's team at CII Honeywell in
1979, made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon.

Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely
what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by
committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous,
multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "The PL/I of the
1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception handling and inter-process communication
features particularly hilarious.

Ada Lovelace (1811-1852), the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's
first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his
mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s, would almost certainly blanch at
the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been
said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get
out from inside its vast, elephantine bulk.

Ada is a large, complex block-structured language aimed primarily at embedded
computer applications. It has facilities for real-time response, concurrency,
hardware access and reliable run-time error handling. In support of large-scale
software engineering, it emphasises strong typing, data abstraction and
encapsulation. The type system uses name equivalence and includes both subtypes
and derived types. Both fixed and floating-point numerical types are supported.

Control flow is fully bracketed: if-then-elsif-end if, case-is-when-end case,
loop-exit-end loop, goto. Subprogram parameters are in, out, or inout. Variables
imported from other packages may be hidden or directly visible. Operators may be
overloaded and so may enumeration literals. There are user-defined exceptions
and exception handlers.

An Ada program consists of a set of packages encapsulating data objects and
their related operations. A package has a separately compilable body and
interface. Ada permits generic packages and subroutines, possibly parametrised.
Ada programming places a heavy emphasis on multitasking. Tasks are synchronised
by the rendezvous, in which a task waits for one of its subroutines to be
executed by another. The conditional entry makes it possible for a task to test
whether an entry is ready. The selective wait waits for either of two entries or
waits for a limited time.

See also Ada/Ed, Toy/Ada.

E-mail: adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu.

FTP, FTP, FTP.

An Ada grammar including a lex scanner and yacc parser is available. E-mail:
compilers-server@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, masticol@dumas.rutgers.edu.

Another yacc grammar and parser for Ada by Herman Fischer is here.

An LR parser and pretty-printer for Ada from NASA is available from the Ada
Software Repository. Michael Feldman <mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu> referred to this
package in comp.compilers, he also has a yacc grammar for ada.

Adamakegen generates makefiles for Ada programs.

["Reference Manual for the Ada Programming Language", ANSI/MIL STD 1815A, US DoD
(Jan 1983)]. Earlier draft versions appeared in July 1980 and July 1982. ISO
1987.

(08 Nov 1994)


Previous: AD - Next: Ada++

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Feedback - Dictionary

Re: Ada explanation?

[Charles H. Sampson]

     What a strange "dictionary" entry.  It starts with a brief history
of Ada and ends with a dispassionate, although not particularly enlight-
ening, list of the language's features.  Between are a representation of
what hackers think about the language and somebody's editorial comment
about what Lady Lovelace would think.

     Does this document have any credence in the industry?  (I've never
heard of it before, obviously.)  I certainly wouldn't peruse it for any
other information, since the author/compiler seems to think that the
most important piece of information is hackers' opinions.

     In other words, is "fixing" this entry worth the effort?

				Charlie

Re: Ada explanation?

[Robert Dewar]

One of the most aggravating mis-statements here is the claim that Ada
was designed by a committee. NOTHING could be further from the truth
(I speak as a member of the only committee in sight at the time, the
DR's, who certainly did NOT act as designers in any sense).

Oh well, who can control what hackers say :-)

Incidentally, I guess that hackers will also find the exception handling
facilities in C++ hilarious. Perhaps they just find it hilarious that anyone
would bother to waste time worrying about error situations in code :-)

Re: Ada explanation?

[Keith Thompson]

In <9501181627.AA19623@eurocontrol.de> Bob Wells #402 <wel@EUROCONTROL.DE> writes:
> I was just browsing around the WWW when I came upon "The Free
> On-Line Dictionary of Computing." I looked up Ada and found the
> following. Perhaps we can give a bit better explanation to the
> maintainer of the dictionary.

FYI, much of this description (from "A Pascal-descended language..."
up to "... vast, elephantine bulk." is from the on-line Jargon File,
also published in book form as _The New Hacker's Dictionary_,
compiled by Eric S. Raymond.

It's actually a pretty cool book, even if it's a bit harsh on our favorite
programming language.  (It also describes C as "a language that combines
all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability
and maintainability of assembly language".)

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith)  kst@thomsoft.com (kst@alsys.com still works)
TeleSoft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Alsys^H^H^H^H^H Thomson Software Products
10251 Vista Sorrento Parkway, Suite 300, San Diego, CA, USA, 92121-2718
When you're a nail, every problem looks like a hammer.

Re: Ada explanation?

[Roger Labbe]

ur, let's take a joke. The first few paragraphs were taken from the
hacker jargon file (available on the MIT GNU FTP server). As you might
expect, the jargon file is less than reverent towards any language
besides C. It is rather satirical and, as it points out, "ha ha only
serious."

Roger

Re: Ada explanation?

[David O'Brien]

Bob Wells #402 (wel@EUROCONTROL.DE) wrote:
: G'day,
: I was just browsing around the WWW when I came upon "The Free
: On-Line Dictionary of Computing." I looked up Ada and found the
: following. Perhaps we can give a bit better explanation to the
: maintainer of the dictionary.

: The dictionary's URL is http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/

Quite interesting.  I just netscape'ed over there and took at look at
it.  What I saw was a much toned down version of what you posted (but it
still has the 08 Nov 1994 edit date.  I wonder why the discrepancy?

What you've included like many have said, is much closer to the Jargon
File (prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/jarg310.txt.gz).  It is very good reading!
The 2nd Edition of "The New Hacker's Dictionary" is a published form of
version 3.0.0 of this file (Sept 1993).

-- David O'Brien

Re: Ada explanation?

[David Weller]

In article <3fnhgv$4mh@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>One of the most aggravating mis-statements here is the claim that Ada
>was designed by a committee. NOTHING could be further from the truth

>Incidentally, I guess that hackers will also find the exception handling
>facilities in C++ hilarious. Perhaps they just find it hilarious that anyone
>would bother to waste time worrying about error situations in code :-)
>

Oddly, C++ is indeed a language being designed by committee (AND
subcommittees!).  


-- 
       Frustrated with C/C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
	

Re: Ada explanation?

[Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760]

dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller)

 > Oddly, C++ is indeed a language being designed by committee (AND
 > subcommittees!).  

For an explanation of how C++ was designed and how the C++ standards
committee works see : Stroustrup: ``The Design and Evolution of C++''
Addison Wesley, 1994.

	- Bjarne

Re: Ada explanation?

[David Weller]

In article <D2t8F7.CBE@research.att.com>,
Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760 <9758-26353> wrote:
>dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller)
>
> > Oddly, C++ is indeed a language being designed by committee (AND
> > subcommittees!).  
>
>For an explanation of how C++ was designed and how the C++ standards
>committee works see : Stroustrup: ``The Design and Evolution of C++''
>Addison Wesley, 1994.
>

Been there, done that.  Good book, by the way -- I recommend anybody
working in programming read it...anyway on with it...

Excerpt from section 5.4:
"The _committee_ now has something like 250 memebers, out of which
something like 70 turn up at meetings..."

To my knowledge (although Bjarne is certainly a closer source than I
:-), there were a few subcommittees also that provided
recommendations on various topics like RTTI and namespaces.

My point is that Ada is frequently maligned as a language "designed
by committee", a phrase that drips with disgust from many ignorant
software developers.  The truth of the matter is the ISO
standardization process of both languages is similar: both are on the
fast track, both were open to public review (although, IMHO, the
process of improving Ada was much more open, providing free access to
reference manual drafts, requirements specs, formal language
comments, and the rationale).  Ada started the revision in 1988 and
completed in 1994, a total of six years.  C++ started in 1990 (March,
1990, according to the D&E book) and is anticipated to be approved in
1996.  My own personal opinion is there won't be something until '97,
but I emphasize that's MY opinion.

-- 
       Frustrated with C/C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
	

Re: Ada explanation?

[David Emery]

>The truth of the matter is the ISO standardization process of both
>languages is similar: both are on the fast track, both were open to
>public review

There's a slightly misleading statement here.  Neither Ada95 nor C++
are using the 'fast track' ISO/IEC JTC1 proceedures.  Both languages
have ISO working groups (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 for Ada and
SC22/WG20(?) for C++).  Both language standards are proceeding through
the normal ISO review cycle, including committee drafts, DIS and IS
ballots.  

				dave

--
--The preceeding opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
--The MITRE Corporation or its sponsors. 
-- "A good plan violently executed -NOW- is better than a perfect plan
--  next week"                                      George Patton
-- "Any damn fool can write a plan.  It's the execution that gets you
--  all screwed up"                              James Hollingsworth
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Ada explanation?

[Norman H. Cohen]

In article <1995Jan19.235443.25311@nosc.mil>, sampson@nosc.mil
(Charles H. Sampson) writes: 

|>      Does this document have any credence in the industry?  (I've never
|> heard of it before, obviously.)  I certainly wouldn't peruse it for any
|> other information, since the author/compiler seems to think that the
|> most important piece of information is hackers' opinions.

Correction:  Not hacker's opinions, but the author's unsupported
assertions about what "hackers are nearly unamimous in observing".  I'd
be willing to bet a month of involuntary servitude on a C++ project that
he never conducted a survey.

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com

Re: Ada explanation?

[David Weller]

In article <EMERY.95Jan23104403@goldfinger.mitre.org>,
David Emery <emery@goldfinger.mitre.org> wrote:
>>The truth of the matter is the ISO standardization process of both
>>languages is similar: both are on the fast track, both were open to
>>public review
>
>There's a slightly misleading statement here.  Neither Ada95 nor C++
>are using the 'fast track' ISO/IEC JTC1 proceedures.  Both languages
>have ISO working groups (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 for Ada and
>SC22/WG20(?) for C++).  Both language standards are proceeding through
>the normal ISO review cycle, including committee drafts, DIS and IS
>ballots.  
>

I sit corrected.  However, it is still the case that both languages
are moving through the approval process at a "faster than considered
'normal'" rate.


-- 
       Frustrated with C/C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
	

Re: Ada explanation?

[David O'Brien]

Norman H. Cohen (ncohen@watson.ibm.com) wrote:
: In article <1995Jan19.235443.25311@nosc.mil>, sampson@nosc.mil
: (Charles H. Sampson) writes: 

: |>      Does this document have any credence in the industry?  (I've never
: |> heard of it before, obviously.)  I certainly wouldn't peruse it for any
: |> other information, since the author/compiler seems to think that the
: |> most important piece of information is hackers' opinions.

: Correction:  Not hacker's opinions, but the author's unsupported
: assertions about what "hackers are nearly unamimous in observing".  I'd
: be willing to bet a month of involuntary servitude on a C++ project that
: he never conducted a survey.

Hummm...  In a way the author *has*.  This is a living document on
USENET.  Many, many people read it.  All are free to comment on it.
But, please do remember its origins -- the AI lab at MIT and SAIL at
Stanford.  In its origins it was a living and evolutionary document.
At this point, I think you'd be hard to say "author" when so many people
have contributed to it.  ESR simply compiles all the submissions.

-- David O'Brien	(dobrien@seas.gwu.edu)