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From: dcw@coral.emspnc.att.com (dcw)
Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ?
Date: 1997/07/29
Message-ID: <5rkve5$637@nntpa.cb.lucent.com>#1/1
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References: <33D005F2.E5DCD710@kaiwan.com> <33D3EC6E.7920@gsg.eds.com>
 <33DD01FA.247D@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> <dewar.870176161@merv>
Organization: AT&T
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-07-29T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <dewar.870176161@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
><<> > How many languages *haven't* survived?
>> FWIW, plenty: ALGOL 58, COMIT, COMTRAN, FACT, IPL-V, NELLIAC, SIMULA,
>> TRAC and many more. I don't expect Ada to die in 10 years, but there
>> is ample precedent.

{...stuff deleted...}

>There are literally thousands of miscellaneous languages that have been
>used a bit, so it is agood thing that many have died off. Let's raise
>the bar a bit and ask for examples of languages that have not survived
>that had at least a national standard, and which were used on a wide
>variety of large projects.
>
>My count of the cardinality of this set is zero.
>

I was fully agreeing with Robert up until the phrase, "...used on a 
wide variety of large projects".  I think that requirement is too
restrictive.  It tilts the balance too far in Ada's favor.  So,
I would stop at languages that had a national standard <or> were
widely used by a broad community.

Using my criteria, I offer the following examples,

UCSD Pascal, Rocky Mountain Basic, PL/M, Forth, RAMISII, DBASIC

Some would assert that UCSD Pascal and Rocky Mountain Basic are 
dialects, not languages.  While I would partially concede the 
point, (they were extensions of a codified standard) there were 
fundamental semantic differences which stretch the definition 
of "dialect".
-- 
David C. (Dave) Willett
Lucent Technologies Greensboro N.C.
(910) 279-7091
dcw@pearl.lucent.com