From: je@bton.ac.uk (John English)
Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ?
Date: 1997/08/19
Date: 1997-08-19T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <5td7pt$fuj@saturn.brighton.ac.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: dewar.871740376@merv
Robert Dewar (dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu) wrote:
: John said
: <<>Charlton Heston doing Shakespeare? Ugh! That's like asking a
: >Cobol programmer to write Ada, or Neil Diamond to sing Gilbert
: >and Sullivan... :-)>>
Fun to go offtopic about Charlton's thespian talents, isn't it?
: I have no opinion about whether Mr. Diamond could sing G&S, but
or Abba (no idea about case; is it ABBA? :-) ND was plucked out of thin
air; think of someone whose singing you hate...
: it is clear that COBOL (please spell the name of the language correctly
: in a group which is so sensitive about the spelling of Ada (*)) programmers
Oops! Since FORTRAN slipped to Fortran I've grown careless...
: can and have written successful Ada code. Indeed this is the case in at least
: one of the important deployed mission critical systems in the DoD -- it was
: an Ada 95 program, large parts of which were written by programmers whose
: previous experience was in COBOL.
Perhaps my original post should have said "unreconstructed COBOL programmers"
(whatever that might mean)... I'm sure everyone knows one :-)
: In fact such statements about COBOL are almost always made out of ignorance
: by people who simply do not know COBOL.
I don't any more -- I gave it up about 20 years ago, and it's changed a bit
since then (as has Fortran/FORTRAN -- they now use years rather than version
numbers, presumably to keep up with Microsoft's latest releases of Life, The
Universe And Everything [TM] or whatever their word processor is called :-)
But hell, pick a language you hate (surely you have one? is IPL-V sufficiently
uncontroversial?) and use that instead...
: (*) COBOL is *not* a woman's name :-)
Damn. Rethink 2nd daughter's name again. Call her Eyepee Ellphive perhaps? :-)
No one would believe that Charlton Heston could be so much fun...
---------------------------------------------------------------
John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
Dept. of Computing | fax: (+44) 1273 642405
University of Brighton |
---------------------------------------------------------------
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1997-08-19 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 78+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1997-08-14 0:00 Is Ada likely to survive ? Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96
1997-08-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-17 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk
1997-08-17 0:00 ` No Spam
1997-08-19 0:00 ` John English
1997-08-19 0:00 ` John English
1997-08-19 0:00 ` Mike Stark
1997-08-27 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk
1997-08-19 0:00 ` John English [this message]
1997-08-24 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-26 0:00 ` Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1997-08-07 0:00 Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96
1997-08-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-11 0:00 ` Richard Kenner
1997-08-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-11 0:00 ` John English
1997-08-04 0:00 Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96
1997-08-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-06 0:00 ` HARRY R. ERWIN
1997-08-06 0:00 ` rodney
1997-08-10 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson
1997-08-10 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1997-08-11 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk
[not found] ` <01bca387$42ffbce0$18a9f5cd@asip120>
1997-08-13 0:00 ` HARRY R. ERWIN
[not found] ` <3404215f.0@news.uni-ulm.de>
1997-08-27 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-13 0:00 ` Mark A Biggar
1997-07-18 0:00 safetran
1997-07-18 0:00 ` Stanley Allen
1997-07-19 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-07-20 0:00 ` Paul Van Bellinghen
1997-07-21 0:00 ` Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
1997-07-19 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-07-21 0:00 ` Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
1997-07-28 0:00 ` W. Wesley Groleau x4923
1997-07-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-07-29 0:00 ` dcw
1997-07-30 0:00 ` Steve Jones - JON
1997-07-30 0:00 ` HARRY R. ERWIN
1997-07-31 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-07-31 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-08-01 0:00 ` Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
1997-08-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-05 0:00 ` Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
1997-07-31 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1997-07-31 0:00 ` HARRY R. ERWIN
1997-07-31 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-08-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-02 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-08-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-01 0:00 ` William Clodius
1997-08-01 0:00 ` William Clodius
[not found] ` <5s6ng4$rq7$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
1997-08-07 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-08-11 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1997-08-11 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-07-19 0:00 ` robin
1997-07-23 0:00 ` Adam Beneschan
1997-07-22 0:00 ` Nasser
1997-07-23 0:00 ` Valerio Bellizzomi
1997-08-01 0:00 ` robin
1997-08-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
[not found] ` <5s6q6b$f3$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
1997-08-09 0:00 ` Ejon
1997-08-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-11 0:00 ` Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
1997-08-17 0:00 ` robin
1997-08-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-22 0:00 ` robin
[not found] ` <5u3c69$5tj$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
1997-08-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-08-30 0:00 ` robin
1997-09-08 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1997-09-17 0:00 ` robin
1997-07-20 0:00 ` Odo Wolbers
1997-07-21 0:00 ` safetran
1997-07-22 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1997-07-22 0:00 ` Nasser
1997-07-23 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1997-07-27 0:00 ` jorgie
1997-07-28 0:00 ` Peter Hermann
1997-07-21 0:00 ` Anonymous
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