Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

An interesting interview with Tucker Taft, some times after Ada 2005  
standard was released. It's all summarized, but cover a wide range of  
anecdotes, ranging from Ichbia and Taft respective view of language  
philosophy, the hard work (and sometime failure) to convince every  
reviewers with a world-wide standard, his belief that Ada will always play  
an important role as a benchmark for other languages, his disappointments  
about the crowd of scripting languages quickly emerging every where (about  
the same errors repeated again and again), and some sort of suggestions he  
give to every one to learn and *understand* (the abstract way) multiple  
languages instead of just one.

Read the paper here (4 pages) :
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/223388/a-z_programming_languages_ada/?


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 2/3/2011 6:37 PM, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:

>
> Read the paper here (4 pages) :
> http://www.techworld.com.au/article/223388/a-z_programming_languages_ada/?
>

Thanks for the link. From the above:

"As it turned out, Jean and I had quite different views on how to
design the object-oriented features of the updated language, and
he ultimately left the project when it was decided to follow
the design team's recommended approach."

Any one has an idea what was Jean Ichbiah's OO design for Ada, or
how different that was from the one that was used for Ada 1995?

--Nasser



  

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:15:54 +0100, Nasser M. Abbasi <nma@12000.org> a  
écrit:
> Thanks for the link. From the above:
Thanks, you liked it :)

Did you also read the second comment to this paper ? …the one whose author  
is Bob Trower.

> "As it turned out, Jean and I had quite different views on how to
> design the object-oriented features of the updated language, and
> he ultimately left the project when it was decided to follow
> the design team's recommended approach."
>
> Any one has an idea what was Jean Ichbiah's OO design for Ada, or
> how different that was from the one that was used for Ada 1995?

Same question for me, and about another one too:

  “ and Jean Ichbiah did an excellent job of
    presenting its features in a way that the
    reviewers could understand and appreciate. Although
    there were flashes of brilliance in the other designs,
    none of them achieved the polish and maturity of the
    Green design. ”

Would like to know about these “flashes of brilliance”.

Although it's probably very too much soon to think about such things, it  
happens I try to imagine what would be an Ada successor (that's why  
keeping track of this old ideas and of the overall history may be worthy  
in the long run), as much as I sometime try to imagine how many times Ada  
gonna stay in the place as-is, without a successor… one or two centuries ?  
(more?)

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 04/02/2011 06:15, Nasser M. Abbasi a écrit :
> "As it turned out, Jean and I had quite different views on how to
> design the object-oriented features of the updated language, and
> he ultimately left the project when it was decided to follow
> the design team's recommended approach."
> 
> Any one has an idea what was Jean Ichbiah's OO design for Ada, or
> how different that was from the one that was used for Ada 1995?
> 
There wasn't really an alternative design from Jean. Tucker was in
charge of designing the new version of the language, and Jean was a
member of the review team.

At the Salem meeting, Jean and Tuck disagreed on a very minor issue, but
went into a passionated argument. Eventually, the proposals were voted,
and Jean lost (by a very small number of votes). He packed his stuff,
left the room saying "Ada and I, it's over", and was never again seen in
the Ada world.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Adalog a déménagé / Adalog has moved:
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 2/4/11 7:31 AM, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Although it's probably very too much soon to think about such things, it happens I try to imagine what would be an Ada successor (that's why keeping track of this old ideas and of the overall history may be worthy in the long run), as much as I sometime try to imagine how many times Ada gonna stay in the place as-is, without a successor… one or two centuries ? (more?)

Random picks from the archives turn up interesting study notes.
One is lsn-048-dr, by Jean D. Ichbiah.   

(If it is not too impolite to speculate about these topics
in public, rumor has had it that one side was favoring the
(typical) working programmer at the cost of not-so-desirable
implementation, which on the other side would have been
considered at least equally important.)

"Syntactic issues are very important for the marketing of a
language and it would be quite regrettable to have postponed their
consideration and find out that it is too late to address them.  The
esthetic appeal can predispose people favorably and do a lot for its
acceptance.  Those who underestimate it often speak of "syntactic
sugaring" as if it were something unimportant, but many semantically
valid languages have failed for lack of charm, for lack of this kind
of appeal that rallies supporters without their being able to explain
why they like it."

Another argument is about possible simplifications and ease
of understanding Ada by saying

   class type T1 is new T0;

instead of what we have now.---Meyer quotes from Ichbiah's resignation
letter which consistently outlines the complexity that Ada 9X
was to introduce. "With 9X, the number of interactions to
consider is close to 60,000 since we have 3 or more possibilities
in each case (that is, 3**10)."  No wonder that SPARK is a
restriction! ;-) ;-) ;-)



Tucker Taft, in lsn-1033-mrt, writes about

"the creation of multiple inheritance type (semi-)lattices using
the proposed Ada 9X object-oriented programming features."

"In this discussion, we will in general use Ada 9X terminology, where
every object has a single "type," and multiple similar types (typically
in some kind of hierarchy or oligarchy) form a "class" of types.  If we
want to use the term "class" as it is used in C++ or Eiffel, we will
always say "C++ class" or "Eiffel class."


I don't know when the 'Class attribute was added to the Ada 9X,
but it seems to me that here is one of its origins.

http://archive.adaic.com/standards/95lsn/

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Rick]

Hi Nasser
Unfortunately, the link does not link.
Would you ind checking it out and re-posting.
Thanks

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[anon]

Combine the two lines into: Note the line ends with "/?"

  http://www.techworld.com.au/article/223388/a-z_programming_languages_ada=/?

In <06a2ddef-ada0-4855-9c47-97e1439fee6c@y35g2000prc.googlegroups.com>, Rick <rickduley@gmail.com> writes:
>Hi Nasser
>Unfortunately, the link does not link.
>Would you ind checking it out and re-posting.
>Thanks

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Rick]

On Feb 5, 8:02 am, a...@att.net wrote:
> Combine the two lines into: Note the line ends with "/?"
>
>  http://www.techworld.com.au/article/223388/a-z_programming_languages_...
>
> In <06a2ddef-ada0-4855-9c47-97e1439fe...@y35g2000prc.googlegroups.com>, Rick <rickdu...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>
> >Hi Nasser
> >Unfortunately, the link does not link.
> >Would you ind checking it out and re-posting.
> >Thanks- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

That one worked.  Thanks

Re: Tucker's interview with TechWorld (2008)

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:18:12 +0100, Georg Bauhaus  
<rm-host.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de> a écrit:
> "Syntactic issues are very important for the marketing of a
> language and it would be quite regrettable to have postponed their
> consideration and find out that it is too late to address them.  The
> esthetic appeal can predispose people favorably and do a lot for its
> acceptance.  Those who underestimate it often speak of "syntactic
> sugaring" as if it were something unimportant, but many semantically
> valid languages have failed for lack of charm, for lack of this kind
> of appeal that rallies supporters without their being able to explain
> why they like it."

May reply later about the overall; for the time, just this:

    “ A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times
      makes it almost seem like a live teacher. ”

     [Bertrand Russell The World of Mathematics (1956)].

Source: http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/minilanguageschapter.html

While these page are not strictly applicable here (mini-language for  
one-lined program, not big languages for large systems), just that as I  
know your interest in languages study, I just though you may be interested  
in these pages.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]