From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,sci.space,sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: "C" vrs ADA Message-ID: <8453@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Sat, 22-Aug-87 20:33:07 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.8453 Posted: Sat Aug 22 20:33:07 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 20:33:07 EDT References: <1065@vu-vlsi.UUCP>, <253@etn-rad.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Keywords: Any suggestions? List-Id: Sigh. Was it really necessary to post 80+ lines of speculation and misinformation? There was no "A" language; "B" was named after BCPL. Unix was developed by *two* people, not one: Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. The PDP-7 was not a microcomputer. C evolved mostly after Unix moved to the PDP-11 (which wasn't a microcomputer either -- the word didn't even exist then). The C Shell came later and was modeled on C, not vice-versa. C has spread far beyond Unix, with good reason. Unix is *not* inherently poor at real-time applications (although this is a common misconception, and it's true that custom-designed real-time systems do better). Many real-time systems are written in C nowadays, since it works just fine without Unix underneath. Ada was (officially, at least) motivated almost entirely by the language diversity problem, since it has little or nothing to do with the lack of a non-proprietary real-time operating system. The attempt to standardize things like the Ada development environments came later, not first. Ada was chosen as a language name not because she was Babbage's mistress (she wasn't), but because in certain ways she was the world's first programmer. Babbage invented (again, in certain ways) the computer, and did not invent the punchcard-controlled loom. Two things were correct: Ada (which is not an acronym and should not be written in capital letters) is important to government contractors because DoD is jamming it down peoples' throats, and its future elsewhere is not yet clear. -- Apollo was the doorway to the stars. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology Next time, we should open it. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry