Re: Interested about number crunching in Ada

["Stuart" <stuart@0.0>]

"anon" <anon@anon.org> wrote in message 
news:Qkrxi.438601$p47.325792@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> First, I was talking about the close source Libraries that the
> DOD CONTRACTED the DEC corporation to write in 77 - 78. Using
> its PDP series computer.
>
> Also, I was only talking about before Ada 83 the previous
> non-commerical versions. The first complete commercial Ada language
> was in 83 but DEC had developed the Jean Ichbiah design a long time
> before 83. And in 83 companies such as IBM, SUN, and even CII
> Honeywell Bull  had to pay DEC for the source code of those close
> source code libraries. The library source code will still be under
> DEC control or its owners until around 2050.
>
> Ada was originally designed by a team led by Jean Ichbiah of CII
> Honeywell Bull under contract to the US DOD in 77. But another DOD
> department contract DEC to write the first Ada compiler in 77 - 78.
> Some 5 to 6 years before Ada 83.

This [the bit about DEC] seems to have been totally overlooked in the 
'history' recorded at the AdaPower web-site.  There the early development of 
an Ada 'compiler' is associated with New York University (NYU) and the 
Ada/Ed model (c1980).

Do you have any references for the role of DEC?  I am also unclear about 
just what these 'libraries' actually are; could you elaborate some more 
please?  There seems to be a scarcity of information about this - even on 
the HP web-site (which still provides the supporting documentation for the 
DEC Ada product).

  [This includes their annotated Ada Language Reference Manual, which seems
   to be one of the few available electronic versions of the old Ada83 
standard.]

> As for the 'MIL-STD-1815' spec was created at the end of 1980.
> But the design and first full language compiler was created in
> 77 - 78 more than two years before. So the 'MIL-STD-1815' was
> not the first word only the first publish word.

That is true (and I don't think I claimed otherwise); the main history of 
Ada is quite readily available - this includes the roles of the 
STRAWMAN-STEELMAN documents, the four competing development teams Green, 
Red, Blue & Yellow.  All these documents were published for review.  (I 
think it is possible to find a commentary on Green by Dijkstra online).

-- 
Stuart