Re: Ada Book

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <EACHUS.95Jan30111422@spectre.mitre.org>,
Robert I. Eachus <eachus@spectre.mitre.org> wrote:

>   Actually there was a Rationale printed in June 1979 by SIGPLAN with
>the Preliminary Ada RM, a version in January 1984 that did not get
>wide distribution (my copy is labeled draft for editorial review), and
>the final version found on the AJPO machine.  

Yes, of course there was the '79 version, but the Ada adopted in 1983
was different enough that the 79 Rationale would be very confusing.
My point was that the 83 Rationale did not emerge on paper till 86
(my "above ground" copy is copyright 86) and didn't appear in electronic
form till much later (90 or so, I guess).

>   Not really.  The original 1979 Rationale did not stand well alone,
>but the 1983 version certainly did.  It is not a reference manual and
>not intended as one.  I prefer to compare it to Jensen and Wirth,
>where a User Manual is combined with a language reference.  Use the
>Rationale (User Manual) to learn the language and the Reference Manual
>(Report) to look up the answers to questions.

Well, the 86 version I just looked at again is certain a nice tutorial, and, 
as the title suggests, _rationalizes_ a lot of the design decisions.
Jean Ichbiah and his co-authors (Barnes, Firth, and Woodger) did a 
very nice job on this. There really is not enough syntactic detail in
it to show one how to really write a program. Indeed, I don't think there
is a full program anywhere in it, just appropriate fragments. This is in no
way a criticism of the Rationale, merely an assertion that it is nothing
like the combined text/rationale/LRM that K&R was in its time.

The Rationale is a great document for those looking for the _why_ of 
language features. Makes terrific background reading. Indeed, it's
an excellent source for authors to use! (I've used it many times for
that!) I just wish it had appeared a little closer in time to the
83 standard.

Mike Feldman