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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!JPL-VLSI.ARPA!larry From: larry@JPL-VLSI.ARPA Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Hopper's Errors Message-ID: <870318190840.054@Jpl-VLSI.ARPA> Date: Wed, 18-Mar-87 22:08:40 EST Article-I.D.: Jpl-VLSI.870318190840.054 Posted: Wed Mar 18 22:08:40 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 20-Mar-87 05:25:37 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet List-Id: -- It's unfortunate that even iconoclastic Grace Hopper has fallen prey to the two greatest Ada myths: that it's tremendously complex, and primarily a real-time programming language. Complexity: the view of an Ada compiler writer (which has been the main one until recently) is very different from that of an Ada user. The compiler writer has to focus on the interior of Ada, which is complex, but the user sees mostly its exterior. After becoming moderately familiar with Ada it becomes, in some ways, actually easier to use than older languages. That's because it's much easier in Ada to design systems as black boxes the way hardware engineers do, and because of the greater automation (primarily type-checking) Ada compilers provide. It's interesting that AT&T has sponsored a follow-on to C (C++) which has several analogs of Ada features. Real-time: the very features that are most needed for real-time programming are optional in Ada, and there are several that are not available at all. Whether the Ada designers were simply ignorant of real-time needs or ignored them while paying lip-service to them, is of interest primarily to historians. The fact is that Ada is a good general-purpose programming language, designed so it can be extended without changing the standard into special-purpose areas such as those CoBOL is used for. Further, it can do a better job because Ada's abstraction features lets application programmers think in terms of customers and sales rather than data and subprograms. Larry @ jpl-vlsi.arpa