Popularizing Ada

[xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan)]

In a thread to which my posting methods will never add a
strand, Diane "I've looked at things from both sides now"
Wilson wrote:

> No, you can't put all Jesus crap aside.

I dunno, He lasted what, 30, 33, maybe 39 years tops
before Pilate decided He'd make a better lawn ornament?

You wouldn't end up with all that big a pile of scats.

> Immaculate conception....  who does Lucas think he's
> kidding, anyway?

At least Lucas doesn't claim Immaculate Digestion, so
you've still got all that raw material for improving
the fertility of the soil in the Garden.

===== random archive quality quote =====
"Usenet is the ephemera of the ephemera, the veritable words written on dust,
the phoenix of speech, the sic transit to the gloria mundi.  My name is
Ozymandus, king.  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
 -- Doug Merritt doug@netcom.com
--
Kent Paul Dolan, <xanthian@well.com>, <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu>

In a thread to which my posting methods will never add a
strand, mlt wrote:

> thus did i give up on the idea of becoming a programmer in
> disgust

I like "programmer in disgust" -- another name for any one
of the myriad of Linux fans and contributors working hard
to put Bill Gates back on skid row where his corrupted
software selling bastard booty belongs.

[Pluralized, it would also make a pretty fair start on a
band name.]


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"Life: it's been hit or miss since I lost the manual." -- Michael Bonnell
--
Kent Paul Dolan, <xanthian@well.com>, <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu>

 serve a better quality of
peeled, deveined shrimp over ice at the monthly FAQ-review
meetings (quality control are our middle names) with the
budget savings from having our raw material already up
toward the top of the gravity well.

X Industries (TINXI) could also put the ozone layer back
where it belongs, instead of precipitating it out with
anvil support mission launch waste gasses once a week.

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(member, "lonely old geezers with lap cats" posting cabel)
--
Kent Paul Dolan, <xanthian@well.com>, <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu>

In a thread to which my posting methods will never add a
strand, "steve" <sebisho@ibm.net> wrote:

> Days of heat, days of light,
> days of murder in the night.

Fooey.  Phoenix just had a cold wave so severe that daytime
temperatures were limited to 78F and the nights actually got
down to 60F, barely above absolute zero (which by statute in
Phoenix is set at 45F).

Hospital emergency rooms were staffing up for an expected
wave of frostbite victims.

Senior citizens were housebound by cars made inoperable due
to burst radiators and ruined battteries.

Cotton farmers were bemoaning the anticipated loss of their
crops due to the biting cold and the wind chill factor.

Owners of the city's many strip bars wept as crowd pleasing
pulsating naked writhing sweaty bodies were replaced by
shivering ecdysiasts in thermal underware, fur coats, and
mukluks, per long standing union contracts.

Don't tell me about Texas' paltry troubles, Phoenix has
troubles of its own.

===== random archive quality quote =====
"I know I am only raising questions without answering them, but the answers
are not that easy, at least not until one has formulated the question better,"
 -- Jim Muller <jmuller@stardent.com>
--
Kent Paul Dolan, <xanthian@well.com>, <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu>

elp
classes; there's nothing _natural_ about it at all.  Jumping
to conclusions -- bad debating form.

> you ought to keep your silly childish opinions to
> yourselves and attend to the wisdom i so graciously cast
> before you like pearls before swine.

Flagrant use of a cliche, age-ism, self-advertising; you
lose a lot of auctorial bonus points here.

> perhaps if you all go off and discuss the matter quietly
> amongst yourselves, you may eventually attain
> enlightenment, albeit entirely by accident, not unlike a
> hundred monkeys gathered around a typewriter producing the
> works of Shakespeare.

Reality check -- when we go off by ourselves, it is to beat
upon cheap imitations of real drums, shoot beer from wide
mouth bottles, and practice self-abuse before an
appreciative audience.  No Real Man has any idea how to
type, though we do get pretty good at spanking monkeys.
Shakespeare who?

> now begone from my sight, pathetic mortals, before i am
> induced to wave my hand and destroy you all in a fit of
> celestial pique!

Yeah, yeah, but you'll be crying to have us back the next
time you get the urge to wear spandex in the rain.

Conclusion:

Well, we know you're not misandrist, you're Miss Tanner, the
artist formerly known as Gypsy, so column B is out.  You're
so demure and reticent trying to express your emotions on
the net that you couldn't sar a chasm with a hundred foot
bridge, so column A is out too.  I guess the only choice
remaining is that you left your travesty generator running
on auto-post again.

Happy to help.  By the way, take a look, do you think this
bagful of clues might have gone stale?  They have that old
sweaty gym sock smell of expensive French cheese.

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Zwei Dinge sind unendlich - Das Universum und die menchliche Dummheit.
 -- Heiko W. Rupp <hwr@pilhuhn.ka.sub.org>
--
Kent Paul Dolan, <xanthian@well.com>, <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu>

In a thread "Subject:  Re:  When will Ada big moment arrive?
what is missing?  " to which my offline posting composition
methods will never add a strand, Marin David Condic
<condicma@bogon.pwfl.com> wrote:

> Remember that C was around for a long time before it
> caught on with any "mass market" appeal.

My impression was that it caught on via BSD Unix and cheap
software for college use, and by appeal to the hacker
mentality.

> The more we do with Ada and the more useful tools we make
> available, the more likely it is Ada will appeal to the
> masses.

I'd rephrase that as "the more fun code we put in the way of
anyone who wants to mess with it, the quicker Ada will gain
a growing cadre of fanatic users".

> Hey!  Anybody out there want to write the next Great
> American Operating System in Ada?  I'm game!  Linux, watch
> out!  :-)

I think a more fruitful approach would be to rewrite and
enhance something like Nethack, in Ada, perhaps as an open
source code multi-university grad school project for a
"cooperative programming in the large" class.

The idea here being sort of like the TV ads where the mom
doesn't tell the kids the juice drink is good for them, just
lets them find out it is fun to drink.

Elsewhere, MDC also wrote:

> So is there some other figure of speech we could abuse in
> this context?

Several ideas come immediately to mind:

"The Ada cure for the common OS"?
"The AdaOS that restores the ozone layer"?
"The AdaOS cure for cancer"?
"The Ada that saves the ecOSystem"?  <-- my vote
"AdaOS for peace in our lifetime"?
"The OS in Ada that ate Manhattan"?
"Ada95OS: last millennium's answer for this millennium's problems"?

I could go on, but I discovered a previously unnoticed
lingering fragment of a conscience at about this point.

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We must not forget that these ridiculous and tyrannical laws were not imposed
from outside -- they were voted by the free agreement of all the interested
parties themselves -- and that their mores were even more austere and
puritanical than their laws.
  -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1838
--
Kent Paul Dolan, <xanthian@well.com>, <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu>