Re: Is there a language that Dijkstra liked? (was: Re: Software landmines (loops))

["Pat Rogers" <progers@acm.org>]

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Matthew Heaney wrote in message ...
>dewarr@my-dejanews.com writes:
>
>> In article <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk>,
>>   Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> > I thought that Dijkstra wrote years after his famous criticism
on Ada,
>> > which basically killed interest on Ada in the academic
community for
>> > many years, a quite nice foreword for an Ada 83 textbook by
Jean Ichiba.
>>
>> Perhaps you are talking about AH's Turing address, which
>> certainly did not "kill interest on Ada in the academic
>> community" [after all at least two major Ada vendors playing
>> today have their roots in academic research efforts]. AH did
>> also write a nice forward for a book by Brian Wichman.
>
>I have to disagree with you, Robert.  It is my opinion that it was
>Hoare's Turing Award speech that single-handedly derailed the Ada
>language effort.  He essentially argued that by using Ada, "the
fate of
>mankind" was at stake.
>
>People listened to him.  Lots of people listened to him.  To this
day,
>people still quote the Hoare speech (among them, Bertrand Meyer) in
>order to back up their own criticisms of Ada.  (The argument goes
>something like, "See, Tony Hoare said Ada was bad, so it must be
so.")

<snip>

>In his speech, Hoare argued that "Ada was doomed to succeed."  This
>hardly sounds like a hearty endorsement.  And his tepid remarks in
the
>forward of David Watt's book seem only perfunctory.

Interesting thought that his later favorable comments in the
foreword would be considered "perfunctory".  I agree that, in
comparison, his foreword has nowhere near the excesses of his TA
speech, and without question, nowhere near the effect of the speech,
but they are nevertheless strongly favorable statements.  In
particular, they are sufficiently positive as to be incompatible
with the TA speech; they cannot both be right.  Since the foreword
was written later, I have to believe that he changed his mind.  The
alternative is to assume that he wrote something he didn't believe,
which is a very serious charge against an academic, as they have no
professional identity without credibility.  (That's why plagiarism
is so major a sin in the academic world.)  Worse, he would have had
to have written something he didn't believe for money (he was the
Series Editor).  I am not prepared to believe these can be true,
without further proof.*

I include the foreword for the sake of comparison:

From the foreword by C.A.R. Hoare to a book titled �Ada Language and
Methodology� by David Watt,
Brian Wichman and William Findlay, published by Prentice-Hall
International, 1987:

�I enjoyed reading the Algol 60 report; it taught me a lot about
programming.�  This is the comment of a
data processing manager of a major motor manufacturing company, who
had no conceivable prospect of
ever using the language to program a computer.  It is a most
perceptive comment, because it describes an
important goal in the design of a new programming language: that it
should be an aid in specification,
description, and design of programs, as well as in the construction
of reliable code.

This is one of the main aims in the design of the language which was
later given the name Ada.  As a result,
the language incorporates many excellent structural features which
have proved their value in many
precursor languages such as Pascal and Pascal Plus.

The combination of many complex features into a single language has
led to an unfortunate delay in
availability of production-quality implementations.  But the long
wait is coming to an end, and one can now
look forward to a rapid and widespread improvement in programming
practice, both from those who use
the language and from those who study its concepts and structures.

I hope that this book will contribute directly to these ideals,
which have inspired many of the other books in
the same series.  It continues the tradition of the series in that
it describes how the language can be used as
the target of a sound programming methodology, embracing the full
life cycle of a programming project.  It
explains not just the features and details of the language, but also
their purpose and method of effective use.

The complexities and difficulties are not glossed over; they are
explained within the appropriate context,
with hints on how to avoid any consequent problems.  I hope the book
will be useful, both to those who
have the privilege or obligation to use the language, and to those
who have the interest and curiosity to
understand and appreciate its rationale.


-- pat

Patrick Rogers
progers@acm.org

* Oh sure, I know it happens, but this isn't just anybody we're
talking about here.