Re: ADA made me hate programming

[Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>]

On 7/6/10 9:55 PM, anon@att.net wrote:

> An example. is a few days ago I said Algol was not used to as
> a base for Ada, because the design team examine Algol and decided to
> decline the use of Algol.  My reference was a report that is on Adaic.com
> the main reference for Ada.

Yes, the reference explicitly talks about possible bases
for the new language.
In close vicinity, there is more on how the evaluations of
the existing languages including ALGOL60 were performed against
the requirements of the new language later to become Ada.
The HOLWG statement of work for each contractor to do so

  "specified that for each language requirement, the contractor was
   to determine the degree of compliance of each of the candidate
   languages, to comment on the feasibility of modifying the language
   to bring it into compliance, and to identify features in excess of
   the requirements."

That's three criteria for each language L against the requirements,

- L's degree of compliance with R,
- can L be changed to meet R,
- is L too much?

The outcome of evaluations of existing languages had positives
and negatives, the positives being that some languages could
be used as a base, whereas others must dismissed as a base---where
"base" is a defined term!  From the same place:

"``Base'' must be distinguished from languages influencing Ada."

I read this as "base" has a very specific sense here and can
easily be confused with "influence".

The same text mentions that the influences on the new language
have been manifold and are counted as contributing to the
requirements document as well (Pascal mostly contributing syntax).

A summary of the process was published by
David Fisher, in Computer, March 1978, pp. 24-33, IEEE,
reprinted in: Wasserman, Anthony I. (1980),
http://lccn.loc.gov/80083087

He summarizes as follows <quote>:

* No language satisfied the requirements so well
that it could be adopted as a common language.

* Several of the languages were sufficiently
compatible with the technical requirements so that
they could be modified to produce an acceptable
language. All of the languages in this group are
derivatives of Algol-68, Pascal, or PL/I.

* Without exception, the evaluators found all the
interim approved languages to be inappropriate as
a basis for developing a common language.

* It was the consensus of the evaluators that it
is currently possible to produce a single language
that would meet essentially all the requirements.

</quote>

Nevertheless, browsing Grau/Hill/Langmaack (1967):
"Translation of ALGOL 60", I see many things that Ada seems
to have adopted, if only because other languages and
styles of programming had been influenced by it and
have influenced Ada in turn.

For the purpose of illustration, some quotes:
"The presence of recursively defined syntactic structures
in ALGOL..."

"The method of the ``Klammergebirge''"  [bracket
mountains] versus the structural analogies in
Ada '83 Rationale, 2.2 or the Ada Comb (Riehle).
(Turning a pretty printed Ada text 90° counterclockwise
shows the same shape as a Klammergebirge, even when the
latter is introduced with parenthesized expressions;
I understand that GNAT has a recursive descent parser.)

...

So while ALGOL 60 has been dismissed as a "base" (defined term) on
which to build Ada, my understanding of all this is that there is
influence.  The wikipedia article has always listed Algo68 as
influential, and compares Ada and ALGOL60, see below.

Certainly the contractors who did the evaluations
know more?  Are there still documents or reviews in the
HOLWG/AJPO/... archives? I suspect there is a wealth of interesting
information in the evaluation reports, I guess it might even
supply for much of the work on new languages that seems
so inevitable.


> After that post the Wikipedia page on Ada was
> altered to say the Algol influenced Ada only hours after I make the post.

Which wikipedia page on Ada is this?  I checked both the version history
of the Ada entry in wikipedia and the Ada programming wikibook;
the versions from the last two months all compare Ada to ALGOL60
by mentioning features that ALGOL60 did *not* have; the paragraph
including "ALGOL60" shows no changes.


> Was it someone on this board, I am not sure but it just proves that what
> on Wikipedia can not be trusted.

Wikipedia is almost like FOX News, except that citizens
get a chance to say something about the news or its presentation
when something demands it...  :-)