Re: Common ADA apps

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> GNAT is at least one reasonably famous app written in Ada.

From Jargon File (4.2.3, 23 NOV 2000) [jargon]:

  MFTL /M-F-T-L/ [abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language'] 1.
  adj.  Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on
  the syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g.,
  type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see {content-free}).
  More broadly applied to talks -- even when the topic is not a programming
  language -- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and
  meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content.  "Well,
  it was a typical MFTL talk".  2. n. Describes a language about which the
  developers are passionate (often to the point of proselytic zeal) but
  no one else cares about.  Applied to the language by those outside the
  originating group.  "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL."
  
     The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is
  usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from
  contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself.
  Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been
  used for anything besides its own compiler?"  On the other hand, a
  (compiled) language that cannot even be used to write its own compiler
  is beneath contempt.  (The qualification has become necessary because
  of the increasing popularity of interpreted languages like {Perl} and
  {Python}.) See {break-even point}.
  
     (On a related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the
  generality and utility of a language and the operating system under
  which it is compiled: "Is the output of a FORTRAN program acceptable as
  input to the FORTRAN compiler?"  In other words, can you write programs
  that write programs? (See {toolsmith}.)  Alarming numbers of (language,
  OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is FORTRAN;
  aficionados are quick to point out that {Unix} (even using FORTRAN)
  passes it handily.  That the test could ever be failed is only surprising
  to those who have had the good fortune to have worked only under modern
  systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file types".)