Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[krfkeith]

Sigh,
I'm sure this is old hat you guys, but I need to get this off my chest. I'm so sick of the smug ignorance of myopia of self-styled "hackers" that nothing exists besides C, Perl/Python, and Linux, and that there is no market besides pandering to neckbeards. This kind of attitude is exemplified nowhere "better" than the jargon file. For example, read the page on Ada!

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/Ada.html

<snip>
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.
</snip> 

In the first sentence (before the quote), it mentions that Ada was made mandatory by the DoD. As if having a standard for extremely mission critical things (like, oh, I dunno, national security) is somehow a bad thing? Anyway, continuing on, we learn that "hackers" dislike Ada. What the hell is a "hacker," and more to the point, why should I care what the hell they think? And yes, I realize it means "hacker" in the good sense (as opposed to cracker), but I still think it's a stupid statement. Oh, a language was rigorously developed by a team of experts and professionals to fit a very specific need with a particularly large level of security and predictability? Yeah, well, some cheetos-dust covered "hacker" behind a computer screen thinks it sucks so whatever. What on earth is endorsement by fiat even supposed to me? Is there any other kind of fiat? Does the author even know what the word fiat means? 

I take issue with the claim that Ada was "designed by committee," because it wasn't. Several groups put in bids for what the DoD was looking for, and chose a language that we know as Ada from among them. But regardless, what exactly is *wrong* with so-called design by committee, besides its morphing into a snarl word? I see this used all the time, sometimes even when it makes no sense, without any explanation as to why it is bad. And yes, while I agree that committees can lack vision, so can individuals. Conversely, individuals can also lack man power, experience, sufficiently wide knowledge and aptitude, and ability to see beyond one's own mistakes and eccentricities. 

Difficult to use is entirely a matter of opinion. Is C or C++ *easy* to use?? Besides that even, judging a language by the standards of another is absurdly unfair. I wouldn't say, I dunno, 68000 assembly code is particularly easy (though it is rather nice as assembly goes) but that doesn't mean it sucks. It serves an entirely different purpose than does high level languages. The primary goal of Ada is to prevent the kinds of bugs and security issues that plague code of other languages, like C. I have to ask myself a lot, why, in 2013, something as moronic as buffer overflows are still a problem. And yes, proper typing systems take just a little bit longer to type. I'm sorry it's such a burden to you to have to take precautions to write code that isn't riddled with bugs and security holes. 

Disastrous? By what metric? The DoD seems to be doing fine. Ever taken an airplane flight and not crashed? Well, Ada seems to be doing well there as well! Again, the arrogance is stunning. "This thing doesn't meet my standards of what constitutes good, therefore it isn't."

The part about exception handling and IPC is particularly baffling. How exactly is it hilarious? Right, because C is so great in that regard right?

All in all, I'm just so sick of the smarmy types of people who call themselves hackers. I've seen them attack everything that isn't C and UNIX. For example, DEC's VMS sucks(ed) because it isn't a "hackers' OS." Okay, and what on earth does THAT mean? Did you know that programmers exist outside of those who think C is the second coming of Christ and that UNIX was a perfect design incapable of being improved? Shocking, isn't it! Did you also know that some stuff, like, oh I dunno, medical equipment or thinks that prevent us from dying like avionics computers can't deal with the imbecile coding styles employed by far too many C programmers? It just gets under my skin that people are so oblivious to the fact that not all programming is serving up web pages or video games.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Adam Beneschan]

On Friday, September 20, 2013 3:18:29 PM UTC-7, krfk...@gmail.com wrote:

I realize this is just a rant (against people who deserve to be ranted against), but ...

> Disastrous? By what metric? The DoD seems to be doing fine. Ever taken an airplane flight and not crashed? Well, Ada seems to be doing well there as well! 

Dunno about anyone else, but whenever I take an airplane flight and don't crash, I thank God, the pilot, the aviation engineers who build the planes, the maintenance crew, and the air traffic controllers, approximately in that order.  Crediting any software, let alone the language it's written in, is really, really, really way down on the list.

                                -- Adam

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[John B. Matthews]

In article <2f813569-5ff8-4c20-a5ab-8538e6514906@googlegroups.com>,
 krfkeith@gmail.com wrote:

> http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/Ada.html
> 
> <snip>
> 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.
> </snip> 

The editorial bias is epitomized in these two links:

<http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/bondage-and-disciplinelanguage.html>

<http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/l/languagesofchoice.html>

The C programming language fares only slightly better:

<http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/c/C.html>

Which reminds me of Greenspun's tenth rule & corollary, disingenuously 
missing from the jargon file itself:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule>

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 21.09.13 00:18, krfkeith@gmail.com wrote:
> All in all, I'm just so sick of the smarmy types of people who call themselves hackers.

Even when the introduction of Ada is seen without its background
of a few hundred PLs used and payed for by just one organization,
there is something to be learned about inventing PLs:

  Always consider the reactions of the people involved,
  mathematically. Not just technicalities.

The number of PLs used today seems smaller than that reported for 1979.
For whatever reasons. But the market has become vendor-driven again!
Therefore, if things go back to a plethora of offerings, and someone
wishes to do something about it like supplanting the multitude with
just a few specimen,maybe there will be an opportunity, in the future,
to make the same mistakes again: the clever people who know Ada's history
will then do the catering and sell oil for the flames in the wars of pride.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[gautier_niouzes]

> This kind of attitude is exemplified nowhere "better" than the jargon file.

Before losing too much your temper, this "jargon file" is *very* old. It probably predates the first diskette and certainly its authors never saw an Ada compiler, nor found any use of a high-level language for hacking bits on their PDP-10's... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon_File

G.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shark8]

On Friday, September 20, 2013 4:18:29 PM UTC-6, krfk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Sigh,
> 
> I'm sure this is old hat you guys, but I need to get this off my chest. I'm so sick of the smug ignorance of myopia of self-styled "hackers" that nothing exists besides C, Perl/Python, and Linux, and that there is no market besides pandering to neckbeards. This kind of attitude is exemplified nowhere "better" than the jargon file. For example, read the page on Ada!
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/Ada.html
> 
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 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.
> 
> </snip> 
> 
> 
> 
> In the first sentence (before the quote), it mentions that Ada was made mandatory by the DoD. As if having a standard for extremely mission critical things (like, oh, I dunno, national security) is somehow a bad thing? Anyway, continuing on, we learn that "hackers" dislike Ada. What the hell is a "hacker," and more to the point, why should I care what the hell they think? And yes, I realize it means "hacker" in the good sense (as opposed to cracker), but I still think it's a stupid statement. Oh, a language was rigorously developed by a team of experts and professionals to fit a very specific need with a particularly large level of security and predictability? Yeah, well, some cheetos-dust covered "hacker" behind a computer screen thinks it sucks so whatever. What on earth is endorsement by fiat even supposed to me? Is there any other kind of fiat? Does the author even know what the word fiat means? 
> 
> 
> 
> I take issue with the claim that Ada was "designed by committee," because it wasn't. Several groups put in bids for what the DoD was looking for, and chose a language that we know as Ada from among them. But regardless, what exactly is *wrong* with so-called design by committee, besides its morphing into a snarl word? I see this used all the time, sometimes even when it makes no sense, without any explanation as to why it is bad. And yes, while I agree that committees can lack vision, so can individuals. Conversely, individuals can also lack man power, experience, sufficiently wide knowledge and aptitude, and ability to see beyond one's own mistakes and eccentricities. 
> 
> 
> 
> Difficult to use is entirely a matter of opinion. Is C or C++ *easy* to use?? Besides that even, judging a language by the standards of another is absurdly unfair. I wouldn't say, I dunno, 68000 assembly code is particularly easy (though it is rather nice as assembly goes) but that doesn't mean it sucks. It serves an entirely different purpose than does high level languages. The primary goal of Ada is to prevent the kinds of bugs and security issues that plague code of other languages, like C. I have to ask myself a lot, why, in 2013, something as moronic as buffer overflows are still a problem. And yes, proper typing systems take just a little bit longer to type. I'm sorry it's such a burden to you to have to take precautions to write code that isn't riddled with bugs and security holes. 
> 
> 
> 
> Disastrous? By what metric? The DoD seems to be doing fine. Ever taken an airplane flight and not crashed? Well, Ada seems to be doing well there as well! Again, the arrogance is stunning. "This thing doesn't meet my standards of what constitutes good, therefore it isn't."
> 
> 
> 
> The part about exception handling and IPC is particularly baffling. How exactly is it hilarious? Right, because C is so great in that regard right?
> 
> 
> 
> All in all, I'm just so sick of the smarmy types of people who call themselves hackers.

I can totally understand that.

> I've seen them attack everything that isn't C and UNIX.

Tell me about it; that's one of the biggest turn-offs I encountered in school. There's a portion of a rant in the Unix-Hater's Handbook which claims that Unix had stunted development/advancement in OSes and with that attitude I encountered I don't doubt it (or that the same is [mostly] true of C/C++).

> It just gets under my skin that people are so oblivious to the fact that not all programming is serving up web pages or video games.

Even if something *is* web-based there's no excuse for as poor programming/implementation as I've encountered [here's looking at you PHP] -- if it deals with real-money I would find against any company that had PHP in their software-stack were I on the jury of a civil [or criminal] case simply due to how fast-and-loose it plays with the conversions. (And C/C++, while an order of magnitude better, is still unacceptable IMO.)

All that said, it would be nice if I could articulate an excellent counter-argument.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Sunday, 22 September 2013 23:24:24 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
> 
> 
> Tell me about it; that's one of the biggest turn-offs I encountered in school. There's a portion of a rant in the Unix-Hater's Handbook which claims that Unix had stunted development/advancement in OSes and with that attitude I encountered I don't doubt it (or that the same is [mostly] true of C/C++).
> 
If a proper APSE had been developed, I'm sure it would have displaced Unix. It wouldn't have been that difficult, as was demonstrated by Linux. After all, Unix is only really a C programming support environment, at least the core and shell.

The power of Unix is mainly down to the brilliant invention of fork and exec - they're what led to sockets and the elegance of TCP/IP compared to other protocols of the time. This is particularly evident if you look at the horlicks that MSDOS makes of networking, even DOS version Windows 7.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 9/22/2013 11:43 PM, Peter Brooks wrote:
> On Sunday, 22 September 2013 23:24:24 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
>>
>>
>> Tell me about it; that's one of the biggest turn-offs I encountered in school.
>>
>


> The power of Unix is mainly down to the brilliant invention of fork and exec -
>

Also that devices of any sort, can be viewed as files. This is a nice
and clean interface design. A socket is treated as a file just as well as
a plain text file or a hard disk device. Piping and stdout/stdin/stderr
etc... all makes things work well together.

Make one small program that does one thing, but does it very well, is
what I like about Unix/Linux. (...but I am still waiting for the year that
Linux finally figures how to build an easy to use desktop :)

--Nasser

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shark8]

On Sunday, September 22, 2013 11:14:12 PM UTC-6, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> 
> Also that devices of any sort, can be viewed as files. This is a nice
> and clean interface design.

No, it really isn't. (Nice, anyway; clean is very arguable.)
Devices *aren't* files, and viewing them as files forces you to the lowest common denominator: much like those claiming "it's all binary [so types don't matter]" it fails to realize the fundamental differences between the devices just as the "it's a blob of binary" fails to realize that arithmetic-addition on a string is not good.

> A socket is treated as a file just as well as
> a plain text file or a hard disk device. Piping and stdout/stdin/stderr
> etc... all makes things work well together.

Until the crapracular file-system screws up permissions.

> Make one small program that does one thing, but does it very well, is
> what I like about Unix/Linux. (...but I am still waiting for the year that
> Linux finally figures how to build an easy to use desktop :)

Because of the above mentality*, it may never happen.

* Ease of implementation over ease of use. (The Unix mentality also elevates implementation-ease over correctness.)

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 9/23/2013 1:05 AM, Shark8 wrote:

>> Make one small program that does one thing, but does it very well, is
>> what I like about Unix/Linux. (...but I am still waiting for the year that
>> Linux finally figures how to build an easy to use desktop :)
>

> Because of the above mentality*, it may never happen.
>

Well, it has just happened!!

"Intel: The year of the Linux desktop is here"
"Intel sees Linux as the leading end-user operating system."

http://www.zdnet.com/intel-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop-is-here-7000020849/

(I do however remember reading articles such the above in each of the last
10 or more years claiming the same thing, so we just have to wait and see
if this year is _really_  that year that everyone has been waiting for or not :)

--Nasser

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Richards]

On 2013-09-23, Nasser M. Abbasi <nma@12000.org> wrote:
> On 9/23/2013 1:05 AM, Shark8 wrote:
>
>>> Make one small program that does one thing, but does it very well, is
>>> what I like about Unix/Linux. (...but I am still waiting for the year that
>>> Linux finally figures how to build an easy to use desktop :)
>>
>
>> Because of the above mentality*, it may never happen.
>>
>
> Well, it has just happened!!
>
> "Intel: The year of the Linux desktop is here"
> "Intel sees Linux as the leading end-user operating system."
>
> http://www.zdnet.com/intel-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop-is-here-7000020849/
>
> (I do however remember reading articles such the above in each of the last
> 10 or more years claiming the same thing, so we just have to wait and see
> if this year is _really_  that year that everyone has been waiting for or not :)
>

If it does happen it will be interesting to see what the Linux kernel devs
say and do (see Theodore Tso's comments elsewhere) about Intel's hardware
RNG and other possible smoke and mirrors in light of the Snowden affair.

I suspect people "in the know" won't touch Intel-supplied anything with a
thousand foot pole. Our business is run on non-Intel architecture hardware
anyway but the few Intel boxes we did have were replaced with AMD years ago.

Bill

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Richards]

On 2013-09-23, Nasser M. Abbasi <nma@12000.org> wrote:

> Also that devices of any sort, can be viewed as files. This is a nice
> and clean interface design. 

Alternatively, it's a good example of excessive and unwarranted abstraction.

> Make one small program that does one thing, but does it very well, is
> what I like about Unix/Linux. (...but I am still waiting for the year that
> Linux finally figures how to build an easy to use desktop :)

It seems what you like about Unix/Linux is what makes it impossible to do
anything well aside from running on the most platforms. There will never be
a good desktop experience on UNIX/Linux (not that it bothers me personally)
simply because thousands of small programs sloppily thrown together and
relying on thousands of other sloppily written small programs don't scale
and can't be bashed into a coherent whole. How much time must go by until
the motley UNIX crew realize this isn't working? The "UNIX Way" is a way
that gets a lot of code "written" and somewhat running but quality and
integration can never happen this way.

At the very essence UNIX is really rather antithetical to most Ada
programmers. UNIX is about chaos, lack of planning, coding without or in
spite of design, expedience, and producing large volumes of sloppy code. Ada
is about order, planning, design and then implementation, doing things
correctly with a long term view and thinking about the next guy or guys
who'll maintain it. If they spent as much time polishing their code as they
do their silly communist license boilerplate we'd have quite a different
situation by now ;-)

Bill

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Findlay]

On 23/09/2013 08:00, in article l1oour$t7r$1@speranza.aioe.org, "Bill
Richards" <billrich@gmx.com> wrote:

> ...  There will never be
> a good desktop experience on UNIX/Linux (not that it bothers me personally)

OS X gives me a pretty good desktop experience.

> simply because thousands of small programs sloppily thrown together and
> relying on thousands of other sloppily written small programs don't scale
> and can't be bashed into a coherent whole. How much time must go by until
> the motley UNIX crew realize this isn't working?

Well it "hasn't" ( really?) been working for 40+ years and I don't see that
changimg anytime soon.  Strawmen (geddit?) are not a substitute for well
founded argument.

...

> If they spent as much time polishing their code as they
> do their silly communist license boilerplate we'd have quite a different
> situation by now 

"communist"?  Your're a teabagger, aren't you? 8-)

> ;-)

Was that *whole* post tongue-in-cheek?

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Monday, 23 September 2013 09:55:27 UTC+2, Bill Findlay  wrote:
>
> > ...  There will never be
> 
> > a good desktop experience on UNIX/Linux (not that it bothers me personally)
> 
> OS X gives me a pretty good desktop experience.
> 
The best one currently known.
> 
> Well it "hasn't" ( really?) been working for 40+ years and I don't see that
> changimg anytime soon.  Strawmen (geddit?) are not a substitute for well
> founded argument.
> 
Quite. 
> 
> Was that *whole* post tongue-in-cheek?
> 
Unlikely.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Richards]

On 2013-09-23, Bill Findlay <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> On 23/09/2013 08:00, in article l1oour$t7r$1@speranza.aioe.org, "Bill
> Richards" <billrich@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>> ...  There will never be
>> a good desktop experience on UNIX/Linux (not that it bothers me personally)
>
> OS X gives me a pretty good desktop experience.

And? This is no contradiction to what I said. If anything it's simply proof
of what I said. Apple's desktop isn't thousands of ad-hoc pieces of code
that depend on thousands of other ad-hoc pieces. It's a GUI designed as a
GUI, to integrate with their other pieces.

>> simply because thousands of small programs sloppily thrown together and
>> relying on thousands of other sloppily written small programs don't scale
>> and can't be bashed into a coherent whole. How much time must go by until
>> the motley UNIX crew realize this isn't working?
>
> Well it "hasn't" ( really?) been working for 40+ years and I don't see that
> changimg anytime soon.  Strawmen (geddit?) are not a substitute for well
> founded argument.

Try as I might to parse those two sentences, I can't derive any semantic
value in them. 

At any rate UNIX existing /= "working". The first years don't count since
"UNIX" was single user, and ran only on a PDP-7 of which only 200 were
made. All that history hasn't helped. It's a sloppy mess that just
oozes. You would think with all that time to design and refine they wouldn't
be facing the same categories of errors with every new version. Race
conditions, buffer overflows. Everything's an add-on. Nothing is planned.
Things just happen when they happen. It's pure software reactionism and
totally counter to everything Ada stands for.

>
> ...
>
>> If they spent as much time polishing their code as they
>> do their silly communist license boilerplate we'd have quite a different
>> situation by now 
>
> "communist"?  Your're a teabagger, aren't you? 8-)

I don't know what a teabagger is but I do know communism when I read
it. Free Software Manifesto? Viral forcible open source licensing? No
thanks. I write proprietary software and they sell it. Then I support it. No
excuses, no blaming libraries or dependencies or other fingerpointing. We
stand by what we sell and the only thing our software depends on is the OS.

>
>> ;-)
>
> Was that *whole* post tongue-in-cheek?

Not at all. UNIX just happened. C just happened. Personally I have no use
for either. I simply prefer good designs and discipline to the sloppy
expedience of UNIX. If it weren't free as in doesn't cost money, UNIX/Linux
wouldn't have been able to blot out most of the native species.

Communists need a religion and quite a few of them seem to have chosen
Stallmanism. I prefer Adam's words about knowing who to thank when the
plane doesn't crash. Really a nice post.

Bill

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Findlay]

On 23/09/2013 09:37, in article l1oukm$cuu$1@speranza.aioe.org, "Bill
Richards" <billrich@gmx.com> wrote:

> On 2013-09-23, Bill Findlay <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>> Was that *whole* post tongue-in-cheek?
> 
> Not at all. UNIX just happened. C just happened. Personally I have no use
> for either. I simply prefer good designs and discipline to the sloppy
> expedience of UNIX. If it weren't free as in doesn't cost money, UNIX/Linux
> wouldn't have been able to blot out most of the native species.

Irreconcilable world views are at play here, I think.

> I prefer Adam's words about knowing who to thank when the
> plane doesn't crash.

God? Really?

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 23.09.13 09:00, Bill Richards wrote:
> Ada
> is about order, planning, design and then implementation, doing things
> correctly with a long term view and thinking about the next guy or guys
> who'll maintain it.

Your description of what Ada is about sounds very much like a description
of planned economy in Stalinist states of not long ago. 8-)


(Reading this kind of argument, a reader may associate Ada with some
extraneous assumptions, all non-technical, politically heated, that likely
keep Ada out of this readers mind. So, I do hope they notice "rant" at
least.)

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Richards]

On 2013-09-23, Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> wrote:
> On 23.09.13 09:00, Bill Richards wrote:
>> Ada
>> is about order, planning, design and then implementation, doing things
>> correctly with a long term view and thinking about the next guy or guys
>> who'll maintain it.
>
> Your description of what Ada is about sounds very much like a description
> of planned economy in Stalinist states of not long ago. 8-)

Really? I didn't know they worried about who would maintain things ;-)

> (Reading this kind of argument, a reader may associate Ada with some
> extraneous assumptions, all non-technical, politically heated, that likely
> keep Ada out of this readers mind. So, I do hope they notice "rant" at
> least.)

I don't see any non-technical or politically heated assumptions in what you
quoted. I don't suppose you think what I listed aren't fundamental views of
Ada.. if you were talking about rant then that was about UNIX. I'm sure you
can tell the difference.

Bill

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shmuel Metz]

In <524002d3$0$6553$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net>, on
09/23/2013
   at 10:59 AM, Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> said:

>Your description of what Ada is about sounds very much like a
>description of planned economy in Stalinist states of not long ago.
>8-)

My reading of history is that stalin gave no consideration whatsoever
to the people who had to maintain what he decreed. If something didn't
work, it was off to the gulag for them, not a reevaluation of his
planning. But "Peter and the Commissar" applies equally well to the
corporate world.

-- 
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT  <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action.  I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.  Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Paul Rubin]

Bill Richards <billrich@gmx.com> writes:
> Ada is about order, planning, design and then implementation, doing
> things correctly with a long term view and thinking about the next guy
> or guys who'll maintain it. If they spent as much time polishing their
> code as they do their silly communist license boilerplate we'd have
> quite a different situation by now ;-)

I wonder if you use the Adacore GNAT compiler, and if so, where you
think most of the code in it came from.  Hint:
  http://www.adacore.com/gnatpro/toolsuite/

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Richards]

On 2013-09-24, Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Bill Richards <billrich@gmx.com> writes:
>> Ada is about order, planning, design and then implementation, doing
>> things correctly with a long term view and thinking about the next guy
>> or guys who'll maintain it. If they spent as much time polishing their
>> code as they do their silly communist license boilerplate we'd have
>> quite a different situation by now ;-)
>

I was referring to the difference between the Ada world-view and the UNIX
(Linux) world view.


> I wonder if you use the Adacore GNAT compiler, and if so, where you
> think most of the code in it came from.  Hint:
>   http://www.adacore.com/gnatpro/toolsuite/

We don't use it where I work although I've used the so-called gcc-ada for
some personal projects. I'm well aware where it comes from. I paid for
it. And so did anyone else who was paying U.S. income tax when NYU received
the federal grant to develop it. It's a neat trick that somebody was able to
turn a federally-funded educational software development project into a
private, for-profit business. Hint: the code was not GPL until after 3.15p.

Bill

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Findlay]

On 24/09/2013 08:05, in article l1rdj8$uge$1@speranza.aioe.org, "Bill
Richards" <billrich@gmx.com> wrote:
 
> We don't use it where I work although I've used the so-called gcc-ada for
> some personal projects. I'm well aware where it comes from. I paid for
> it. And so did anyone else who was paying U.S. income tax when NYU received
> the federal grant to develop it. It's a neat trick that somebody was able to
> turn a federally-funded educational software development project into a
> private, for-profit business. Hint: the code was not GPL until after 3.15p.

And you call that communist?
It's in the best traditions of pork-barrel capaitalism, isn't it?

(BTW my tongue *is* in my cheek.)
-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Richards]

On 2013-09-24, Bill Findlay <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> On 24/09/2013 08:05, in article l1rdj8$uge$1@speranza.aioe.org, "Bill
> Richards" <billrich@gmx.com> wrote:
>  
>> We don't use it where I work although I've used the so-called gcc-ada for
>> some personal projects. I'm well aware where it comes from. I paid for
>> it. And so did anyone else who was paying U.S. income tax when NYU received
>> the federal grant to develop it. It's a neat trick that somebody was able to
>> turn a federally-funded educational software development project into a
>> private, for-profit business. Hint: the code was not GPL until after 3.15p.
>
> And you call that communist?

No! I'm calling Linux/GPL communist and saying there's much wrong about
UNIX. Much about UNIX is contrary to what Ada is all about. This thread has
become very confusing but Ada/GPL was not what I (or anyone) was talking
about until Paul brought it up.

> It's in the best traditions of pork-barrel capaitalism, isn't it?

It certainly could have been. I don't understand how they got away with it
though. Makes you wonder how often this sort of thing has happened. Of
course the other way around happens a lot too, where some person or company
spends all the money and effort creating or developing something and the
government appropriates it. California is famous for this. Find and
cultivate a source of water or minerals or some other natural resource on
so-called "private land", spend millions or hundreds of millions on
development, and then the state grabs it under some "Public Good" clause or
otherwise ties you up in court for a decade until you can't afford the legal
bills anymore. Makes you wonder how private the land was, or why it was
worth buying or even how it was possible to buy it in the first place...

Bill

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 24.09.13 09:49, Bill Richards wrote:
>> It's in the best traditions of pork-barrel capaitalism, isn't it?
> It certainly could have been. I don't understand how they got away with it
> though. Makes you wonder how often this sort of thing has happened.

See Robert Dewar's explanations of their govt. contract, if you
are interested.

This sort of thing happens all the time. There are two forms of
the govt. channeling money to companies, in Ada terms they are
numeric types ranging above and below decimal 0.0, respecively:

(a) through subsidies for companies,
(b) through tax reliefs for companies.

I hope this isn't going to turn into a dispute along the
lower line of the square of opposition.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 24.09.13 09:05, Bill Richards wrote:
> Hint: the code was not GPL until after 3.15p.

It was under GPL, but with an exception that had removed
its tit-for-tat aspect, if used as-is. Used, that is, like MS's
redistributables. FSF-GCC has a similar exception to this day.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Paul Rubin]

Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> writes:
> On 24.09.13 09:05, Bill Richards wrote:
>> Hint: the code was not GPL until after 3.15p.
> It was under GPL, but with an exception that had removed
> its tit-for-tat aspect, if used as-is. Used, that is, like MS's
> redistributables. FSF-GCC has a similar exception to this day.

3.15 was apparently when GNAT was finally merged into the main GCC
distro.  It was previously separate, probably for technical reasons.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shmuel Metz]

In <l1oour$t7r$1@speranza.aioe.org>, on 09/23/2013
   at 07:00 AM, Bill Richards <billrich@gmx.com> said:

>If they spent as much time polishing their code as they
>do their silly communist license boilerplate

I assume that you're referring to the GPL. While I neither care for
nor respect RMS, the GPL is rooted firmly in a capitalist body of
copyright law.

-- 
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT  <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action.  I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.  Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shark8]

On Sunday, September 22, 2013 10:43:36 PM UTC-6, Peter Brooks wrote:
> On Sunday, 22 September 2013 23:24:24 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
> > 
> > Tell me about it; that's one of the biggest turn-offs I encountered in school. There's a portion of a rant in the Unix-Hater's Handbook which claims that Unix had stunted development/advancement in OSes and with that attitude I encountered I don't doubt it (or that the same is [mostly] true of C/C++).
> 
> If a proper APSE had been developed, I'm sure it would have displaced Unix.

If by ASPE you mean an Ada Programming Support Environment, then there was the R-1000. I found a pretty interesting website/blog about a guy's memories of using it.

> The power of Unix is mainly down to the brilliant invention of fork and exec - they're what led to sockets and the elegance of TCP/IP compared to other protocols of the time.

Fork and Exec led to sockets and TCP/IP? I'm sorry, but I seriously don't see the connection there.

> This is particularly evident if you look at the horlicks that MSDOS makes of networking, even DOS version Windows 7.

That's flat-out false: Windows XP, 2000, and 7 are all descended from the NT Kernel, which means they *aren't* impacted by the design of DOS/Win3/Win95/Win98. (But that they are as compatible as they are to programs from that branch of development shows how much effort and care went into building the compatibility layer.)

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Monday, 23 September 2013 07:55:53 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
> 
> > The power of Unix is mainly down to the brilliant invention of fork and exec - they're what led to sockets and the elegance of TCP/IP compared to other protocols of the time. 
> 
> Fork and Exec led to sockets and TCP/IP? I'm sorry, but I seriously don't see the connection there.
> 
Look up the way sockets work and you'll see - TCP/IP is based on exactly that socket architecture.

The fork/exec idea is what makes sockets elegant, not that they look like files, though that has its advantages and disadvantages.
>
> > This is particularly evident if you look at the horlicks that MSDOS makes of networking, even DOS version Windows 7.
> 
> That's flat-out false: Windows XP, 2000, and 7 are all descended from the NT Kernel, which means they *aren't* impacted by the design of DOS/Win3/Win95/Win98. (But that they are as compatible as they are to programs from that branch of development shows how much effort and care went into building the compatibility layer.)
>
All as badly designed, which is why I said it, and also, as I said, why the networking is such a mess.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Sun, 22 Sep 2013 23:12:12 -0700 (PDT), Peter Brooks wrote:

> On Monday, 23 September 2013 07:55:53 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
>> 
>> Fork and Exec led to sockets and TCP/IP? I'm sorry, but I seriously don't
>> see the connection there.
>> 
> Look up the way sockets work and you'll see - TCP/IP is based on exactly
> that socket architecture.

I don't see any relation ether. Clearly if TCP/IP were developed as a part
of UNIX, socket would become a file. Yes, UNIX had no slightest idea that
I/O could be asynchronous. As a result it ran a separate process for each
possible kind of event. What a mess!

(And fork/exec is one of the ugliest parts of UNIX)
 
>The fork/exec idea is what makes sockets elegant, not that they look like
> files, though that has its advantages and disadvantages.

The reason for that was that the OSes like Windows and UNIX treated sockets
as an ad-on rather than integral part of the system. Neither OS was thought
networking and neither was any open to accommodate new classes of devices.
The pattern has repeated itself many times.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Monday, 23 September 2013 09:34:56 UTC+2, Dmitry A. Kazakov  wrote:
> 
> I don't see any relation ether. Clearly if TCP/IP were developed as a part
> of UNIX, socket would become a file. Yes, UNIX had no slightest idea that
> I/O could be asynchronous. As a result it ran a separate process for each
> possible kind of event. What a mess!
> 
If by 'event' you mean a data stream, then, how is that synchronous  I/O?

The Berkley Unix sockets were the API used for TCP/IP and the sockets remained sockets, so that's not the case either.
> 
> (And fork/exec is one of the ugliest parts of UNIX)
> 
Any justification for that prejudice?

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:36:22 -0700 (PDT), Peter Brooks wrote:

> On Monday, 23 September 2013 09:34:56 UTC+2, Dmitry A. Kazakov  wrote:
>> 
>> I don't see any relation ether. Clearly if TCP/IP were developed as a part
>> of UNIX, socket would become a file. Yes, UNIX had no slightest idea that
>> I/O could be asynchronous. As a result it ran a separate process for each
>> possible kind of event. What a mess!
>> 
> If by 'event' you mean a data stream, then, how is that synchronous  I/O?

Stream may have events attached to it. But I don't understand your
question. There is no reason why sockets must be treated differently from
other I/O.

>> (And fork/exec is one of the ugliest parts of UNIX)
>> 
> Any justification for that prejudice?

Fork/exec represent a unique combination of total disregard to efficiency
with violation of practically any known principle of good software design.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Findlay]

On 23/09/2013 10:36, in article 1ixhazoag8y0l.4mpw6pmi83xm.dlg@40tude.net,
"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:36:22 -0700 (PDT), Peter Brooks wrote:
> 
>> On Monday, 23 September 2013 09:34:56 UTC+2, Dmitry A. Kazakov  wrote:
 
>>> (And fork/exec is one of the ugliest parts of UNIX)
>>> 
>> Any justification for that prejudice?
> 
> Fork/exec represent a unique combination of total disregard to efficiency
> with violation of practically any known principle of good software design.

Now there I have to agree with the UNIX critics.

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Monday, 23 September 2013 11:39:09 UTC+2, Bill Findlay  wrote:
>  
> > Fork/exec represent a unique combination of total disregard to efficiency
> > with violation of practically any known principle of good software design.
>  
> Now there I have to agree with the UNIX critics.
> 
Why? I worked with a number of operating systems before encountering unix, and I've seen a few since. The setup and tear-down work involved with launching processes was a massive overhead that slowed things down and added very little value. Fork-exec, on the other hand, is quick because the child process inherits the environment, which has many other advantages - security, for example, is resolved at login and then inherited, similarly with I/O. 

What's your objection to it? What dispatching system works better?

What particular principles of software design does the mechanism violate?

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Bill Findlay]

On 23/09/2013 13:16, in article
51a27fa6-027d-4655-a78c-6a582811e23f@googlegroups.com, "Peter Brooks"
<peter.h.m.brooks@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 23 September 2013 11:39:09 UTC+2, Bill Findlay  wrote:
>>  
>>> Fork/exec represent a unique combination of total disregard to efficiency
>>> with violation of practically any known principle of good software design.
>>  
>> Now there I have to agree with the UNIX critics.
>> 
> Why? I worked with a number of operating systems before encountering unix, and
> I've seen a few since. The setup and tear-down work involved with launching
> processes was a massive overhead that slowed things down and added very little
> value. Fork-exec, on the other hand, is quick because the child process
> inherits the environment, which has many other advantages - security, for
> example, is resolved at login and then inherited, similarly with I/O.

Inheriting (some subset of) the parent context is fine.

> What's your objection to it? What dispatching system works better?

It duplicates the parent program.  It should allow the program to be run to
be specified as part of the fork.  Postponing that to a following exec
imposes costs that are very often unnecessary, and it can lead to race
conditions in establishing the new running program's context.

> What particular principles of software design does the mechanism violate?

Unnecessary coupling.

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Monday, 23 September 2013 14:54:43 UTC+2, Bill Findlay  wrote:
> 
> It duplicates the parent program.  It should allow the program to be run to
> be specified as part of the fork.  Postponing that to a following exec
> imposes costs that are very often unnecessary, and it can lead to race
> conditions in establishing the new running program's context.
> 
No, it doesn't lead to race conditions because the fork creates two separate instances, each with its own context. What costs do you know of from a later exec? You can, if you wish, run two programs, on from each fork, you don't have to keep a previous version running.

If you want the same effect as a fork with an exec, it's easy to do, you simply do the exec the following statement and have the parent suspend. Actually, the man page for exec() recommends you do this and recommends leaving the exec too late.
> 
> 
> > What particular principles of software design does the mechanism violate?
> 
> Unnecessary coupling.
> 
Unnecessary? A program is always run from a context, with the single exception of init. It is highly unusual for a program to require none of its parents context (I/O programs usually find it handy to have stdin and stdout defined for one thing). So the coupling of a child to its parent makes complete sense. 

I'm not wishing to advocate Unix as a perfect solution, of course, though it's the best known so far. However, if I was going to design an OS from the ground up, in, ideally, Ada, to replace Unix, I'd certainly base it on fork/exec for processes.

That's why I'm asking, if there's a genuine reason why there's something wrong with fork/exec, I'm keen to know it, not as Unix bashing, but because I'd like to know what better solution there might be.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter C. Chapin]

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013, Peter Brooks wrote:

> That's why I'm asking, if there's a genuine reason why there's something 
> wrong with fork/exec, I'm keen to know it, not as Unix bashing, but 
> because I'd like to know what better solution there might be.

It seems to me that an efficient implementation of fork/exec relies on 
memory management tricks such as copy on write and such. This is fine if 
you are using a processor with hardware support for such things but in 
some small scale embedded environments it might be a problem.

Peter

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shmuel Metz]

In <1lgdqz079ogp5.1ti8931i9me3x$.dlg@40tude.net>, on 09/23/2013
   at 09:34 AM, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> said:

>(And fork/exec is one of the ugliest parts of UNIX)

When your only tool is a pipe, everything looks like a filter.

QWK, is it tbl|eqn|roff or eqn|tbl|roff?

-- 
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT  <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action.  I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.  Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Monday, 23 September 2013 07:55:53 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
> On Sunday, September 22, 2013 10:43:36 PM UTC-6, Peter Brooks wrote:
> 
> > On Sunday, 22 September 2013 23:24:24 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
> 
> > > 
> 
> > > Tell me about it; that's one of the biggest turn-offs I encountered in school. There's a portion of a rant in the Unix-Hater's Handbook which claims that Unix had stunted development/advancement in OSes and with that attitude I encountered I don't doubt it (or that the same is [mostly] true of C/C++).
> 
> > If a proper APSE had been developed, I'm sure it would have displaced Unix.
> 
> If by ASPE you mean an Ada Programming Support Environment, then there was the R-1000. I found a pretty interesting website/blog about a guy's memories of using it.
> 
I didn't mean an IDE, though at would be part of an ASPE. Unix is the CSPE.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shark8]

On Monday, September 23, 2013 1:26:51 AM UTC-6, Peter Brooks wrote:
> > 
> > If by ASPE you mean an Ada Programming Support Environment, then there was the R-1000. I found a pretty interesting website/blog about a guy's memories of using it.
> 
> > 
> I didn't mean an IDE, though at would be part of an ASPE. Unix is the CSPE.

The R-1000 wasn't [just] an IDE; it was an OS & a hardware-platform  -- http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2006/01/07/rational-1000-a-surprising-architecture-from-a-surprising-source/

(From the aforementioned website.)

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Peter Brooks]

On Tuesday, 24 September 2013 08:03:54 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
>
> 
> The R-1000 wasn't [just] an IDE; it was an OS & a hardware-platform  -- http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2006/01/07/rational-1000-a-surprising-architecture-from-a-surprising-source/
> 
I wonder where it is now and how difficult it would be to port it to a raspberry-PI or similar platform. It might be a useful starting point for something interesting.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[erlo]

On 09/24/2013 09:51 AM, Peter Brooks wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 September 2013 08:03:54 UTC+2, Shark8  wrote:
>>
>>
>> The R-1000 wasn't [just] an IDE; it was an OS & a hardware-platform  -- http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2006/01/07/rational-1000-a-surprising-architecture-from-a-surprising-source/
>>
> I wonder where it is now and how difficult it would be to port it to a raspberry-PI or similar platform. It might be a useful starting point for something interesting.
>
>
I wouldn't bother, the R1000 essentially ran Ada in hardware. you can 
find more info and a lot af R1000 documentation (including h/w diagrams) 
here:
http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400/Documentation

and a little more info here:

http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400
http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400/Logbook

I used to use these machines to program on for a living - the user 
interface was awkward in the beginning, but once I got used to it, it 
was very effective.

Erlo

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[krfkeith]

I love the laughable claim that WinNT is poorly designed. While some of the userland has left some to be desired, the core of the NT systems is *very* competently designed. The NT team was lead by Dave Cutler, of DEC fame. 

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 23:38:32 -0700 (PDT), krfkeith@gmail.com declaimed the
following:

>I love the laughable claim that WinNT is poorly designed. While some of the userland has left some to be desired, the core of the NT systems is *very* competently designed. The NT team was lead by Dave Cutler, of DEC fame. 

	The internals may be good -- though I could wish for even more of VMS
to have been "ported"... Like (common) event flag clusters, IPC via
mailboxes, and maybe even the entire QIO system...  Somehow the objects
that WinNT+ uses for "wait" don't feel natural to me, and the divorced
socket I/O system show a few warts (select only works on sockets, need a
different API for files, etc.)

	But the failure to provide a decent command shell scripting capability
(a la DCL) saddled it. PowerShell finally makes an apologetic entry (Pity
my main use is a glorified "find":

get-childitem -path "xxx" -filter "*.ext" | select-string -pattern "yyy"

)
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shark8]

On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 5:18:33 PM UTC-6, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 23:38:32 -0700 (PDT), krfkeith wrote:
> >
> >I love the laughable claim that WinNT is poorly designed. While some of the userland has left some to be desired, the core of the NT systems is *very* competently designed. The NT team was lead by Dave Cutler, of DEC fame. 
> 
> 	The internals may be good -- though I could wish for even more of VMS
> to have been "ported"... Like (common) event flag clusters, IPC via
> mailboxes, and maybe even the entire QIO system...  Somehow the objects
> that WinNT+ uses for "wait" don't feel natural to me, and the divorced
> socket I/O system show a few warts (select only works on sockets, need a
> different API for files, etc.)
> 
> 	But the failure to provide a decent command shell scripting capability
> (a la DCL) saddled it. PowerShell finally makes an apologetic entry (Pity
> my main use is a glorified "find":
> get-childitem -path "xxx" -filter "*.ext" | select-string -pattern "yyy"
> )

You know, I've heard a lot of good stuff about VMS (and DEC's Ada compiler) -- kinda makes me wish I had first-hand experience with them. (And, obviously, the R-1000, that sounds like a *very* interesting setup to me... and I'm not convinced that having "the library" [and source, and objects {.o/.obj}] stored in a database isn't "the right way" to do things.)

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Per Sandberg]

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 23:21:19 -0700 (PDT)
Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 5:18:33 PM UTC-6, Dennis Lee Bieber
> wrote:
> > On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 23:38:32 -0700 (PDT), krfkeith wrote:
> > >
> > >I love the laughable claim that WinNT is poorly designed. While
> > >some of the userland has left some to be desired, the core of the
> > >NT systems is *very* competently designed. The NT team was lead by
> > >Dave Cutler, of DEC fame. 
> > 
> > 	The internals may be good -- though I could wish for even
> > more of VMS to have been "ported"... Like (common) event flag
> > clusters, IPC via mailboxes, and maybe even the entire QIO
> > system...  Somehow the objects that WinNT+ uses for "wait" don't
> > feel natural to me, and the divorced socket I/O system show a few
> > warts (select only works on sockets, need a different API for
> > files, etc.)
> > 
> > 	But the failure to provide a decent command shell scripting
> > capability (a la DCL) saddled it. PowerShell finally makes an
> > apologetic entry (Pity my main use is a glorified "find":
> > get-childitem -path "xxx" -filter "*.ext" | select-string -pattern
> > "yyy" )
> 
> You know, I've heard a lot of good stuff about VMS (and DEC's Ada
> compiler) -- kinda makes me wish I had first-hand experience with
> them. (And, obviously, the R-1000, that sounds like a *very*
> interesting setup to me... and I'm not convinced that having "the
> library" [and source, and objects {.o/.obj}] stored in a database
> isn't "the right way" to do things.)

The R-1000:s where wonderful machines of their time, unfortunate they
got some drawbacks, memory and cpu.
I recall that rebuilding a system from scratch was a five week exercise
week 1)      Prepare carefully.
             All the sources in place and quad check the build scripts
             and sources.
weeks 2..4 ) Have the machine to compile then sources.
             The reason for a quad check was that this was time for
             summer leave.
week 5)      Clean up and validate the build.
             Here the quad check paid off.
The core idea of the R-1000:s was that the source was just a rendering
of the "model".
My guess is that if the common terminals of the time has been graphical
there has been a graphical view of the model as well as a source view.

/Persan.

Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 23:21:19 -0700 (PDT), Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>
declaimed the following:



>You know, I've heard a lot of good stuff about VMS (and DEC's Ada compiler) -- kinda makes me wish I had first-hand experience with them. (And, obviously, the R-1000, that sounds like a *very* interesting 

Be my guest:

	http://www.designspark.com/blog/a-raspberry-pi-vax-cluster


	Kind of scary to think something the size of a (double-pack) bridge
card set is emulating the "super-mini" of the 80s.

	Granted, you aren't going to be plugging stuff into a q-bus
backplane...

	My college ran a Sigma 6 with a whopping 1MB of RAM (double the factory
spec, somehow, using all four cabinets -- but with each cabinet holding
just one 256KB circuit board instead of the original magnetic cores. Needed
the four cabinets for the interface -- the Sigma used 4-bank, 4-port
/interleaved/ memory, allowing I/O processors to follow (or lead) the CPU
in simultaneous memory access. CPU could access address 3 [32-bit word] in
bank-4, while an I/O controller is at address 2 in bank-3, another I/O
controller at address 1 in bank-2, and the last I/O controller at address 4
in bank-1). But I digress: we used to run between 50 and 60 ACTIVE
terminals at peak times on that machine (the Gandalf terminal connection
gear was as large as the mainframe; it detected a "connect me" signal from
the terminals and linked them to available I/O ports on the mainframe). I
doubt a modern Windows box could handle 50 remote sessions with any degree
of reasonable response -- even with 1000X the RAM, and who knows how much
faster a processor (ignoring multi-core, yet).
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/