Re: (Ted's Misrepresentations of) Hoare's gripes about Ada

[munck@STARS.Reston.Paramax.COM]

In INFO-ADA Digest V93 #564, Chris Warack said:

>Ted must have seen a somewhat different speech than I've got in my
>Turing Lectures book. ...


Ted: ... the big success stories of recent years, C and Pascal,
>
>Hoare doesn't mention C at all...  only Pascal and ALGOL.


Ted:Hoare noted that the language was far too complex, and that users 
Ted:were going to spend more time working around Ada than solving their
Ted:own problems; ...
>
>NOPE.  Doesn't say this at all...


Ted:And there were a number of other things.  It's not as if he gave a
Ted:long speech on another topic and then, at the end, said "Gee!  this
Ted:Ada thing looks like a bad idea..."
>
>He did in fact give a long speech on another topic (ALGOL) and then
>related the bad things that happened in ALGOL 68 to what might happen
>in Ada "today" (where "today" was 1980).


Ted: ... the entire speech was on the topic
Ted:of Ada, it was a hell of a long speech, and there was a buildup
Ted:which took into account a number of predecessor languages which
Ted:failed for the same reasons which Ada has failed for, and this
Ted:included most notably PL/1.
>
>Pure, unadulterated BS.  The speech was on ALGOL.  PL/I was never
>mentioned.  His concern with Ada was genuine, but it totalled only
>5 written paragraphs.


Ted: ... Ada was a kind of an ultimate
Ted:opposite example to everything which Hoare figured was right.
>
>Not true. ...


Ted: So, assuming the people aren't simply lying  ... That would imply
Ted:that everything he had learned or believed about computer science
Ted:prior to 1980 had been 100% in error,
>
>Well, Ted, ...  I find it ironic that this message which seems to have
> many "factual short-comings" ends accusing others of lying...


What really concerns me is that Ted may also have been misrepresenting
Velikovski all these years.

I think that we owe a debt of gratitude to Capt. Warack for so
thoroughly debunking Ted's pipedream of Hoare's speech.  Unfortunately,
Ted himself will probably just carry on as before; he seems to have
only a very low bandwidth/high noise channel to the real world.


Ted:I figure they probably tied him to a tree and forced him to listen
Ted:to rapp music until he succumbed, but that's ONLY a conjecture.

Great!  I even disagree with Ted's taste in music.  

Bob Munck