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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.182.38.164 with SMTP id h4mr12535781obk.40.1440022784363; Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:19:44 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.50.111.43 with SMTP id if11mr526291igb.1.1440022784323; Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:19:44 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!se8no6645453igc.0!news-out.google.com!h8ni800igv.0!nntp.google.com!se8no6645450igc.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:19:43 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=2601:642:c002:83bb:d5c7:7fde:effd:ff7f; posting-account=XrU4OgoAAADEPkoULFhRQzFYU74OGc9X NNTP-Posting-Host: 2601:642:c002:83bb:d5c7:7fde:effd:ff7f References: <29dd5458-f9ce-4db8-9128-8ab35a9ce5f8@googlegroups.com> <64bc671c-72e5-4924-b703-3b907c69949c@googlegroups.com> <877fq9uj6g.fsf@theworld.com> <65061686-5c8f-433b-9b11-9e228298158e@googlegroups.com> <87k2u96jms.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <06f8a6f9-d219-4d40-b9ac-8518e93839bd@googlegroups.com> <87y4io63jy.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <7a29d3e9-d1bd-4f4a-b1a6-14d3e1a83a4d@googlegroups.com> <87mvz36fen.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <2215b44f-8a89-47c6-a4c4-52b74d2dac45@googlegroups.com> <9e492c82-868d-43d3-a18a-38274400e337@googlegroups.com> <40184feb-4053-4ac3-8eaa-c3bd9cd8a77c@googlegroups.com> <10272577-945f-4682-85bc-8ad47f3653ae@googlegroups.com> <87si8i81k2.fsf@atmarama.net> <8076cbd0-2655-4c98-b70e-cb5f0c32e4ba@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <93c8c452-488c-4deb-a3cb-e9df4a1558ce@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: If not Ada, what else... From: rriehle@itu.edu Injection-Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:19:44 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:27515 Date: 2015-08-19T15:19:43-07:00 List-Id: As to your comment about books, that is why I wrote Ada Distilled, to provi= de simple, fully coded, tested examples with line-by-line comments. Altho= ugh the Ada 2012 version is not quite ready (Ed Colbert of Absolute Softwar= e is updating it), many people still seem to find the Ada 95 version (which= includes some 2005 examples) useful as a place to get started. =20 You are correct about other things. Greedy compiler and tool vendors ( wi= th the exception of Meridian and RR Software) were overpricing the product = so few hobbyists or start-ups could afford to choose Ada. Only Meridian p= rovided a fully functional Ada compiler for Windows at a reasonable price. = Janus was a really good compiler, but did not have easy support for Wind= ows programming. Alsys was huge, cumbersome, too expensive, and not suita= ble for any small organization. The Alsys complier did generate some prett= y good code, but no one was comcerned about that. There weren't many other= options. =20 So, community colleges continued to prefer Turbo-Pascal, a product that wow= ed everyone at the time. I talked with Phillipe Kahn about Ada. He would = have loved to have had an opportunity to create a Turbo-Ada, but the timing= was wrong, and the opportunity was lost. The one (and perhaps, only) goo= d thing Reifer did when he was in charge at AJPO was fund the initial work = on GNAT. Once he left AJPO, he began to publicly disparage Ada, and that = did not help at all. The poorly worded letter from Emmett Page set the stage for Ada's quick dem= ise within the DoD. Now, there is no mandate, and most of the pekple I kn= ow in the DoD software community have interpreted that letter as, not simpl= y cancelling the mandate, but cancelling Ada in favor of anything but Ada. = The camcellation of the mandate was a premature and devaststing event, oc= curring exactly at the moment when Ada, as a language design (Ads 95) was p= oised for extraordinary success. =20 Ada, as a programming language, is still one of the very best for real engi= neering of software solutions (not so good for Q&D or hacking), but we have= very few engineers in software pracrice. We have lots of talented progra= mmers, but few of them have any engineering background or understanding of = engineering. An interesting outcome of learning Ada, for many of them, wa= s a better understanding of what we really meant by the term, software engi= neering. =20 We, the past and present devotees of Ada, have made a lot of mistakes. It= is not clear that we can recover from the bad impression so many of our so= ftware developer colleagues have regarding Ada. However, the new standard= includes some advanced computer science and software engineering features = not present in other, if any, software engineering languages: axiomatic pro= gram design (Hoare, Dijkstra), predicate calculus expressions, and much mor= e. =20 We can, perhaps, rescue Ada's reputation, by reaching out beyond our own na= rrow community with information about these powerful capabilities. That c= an include more academic papers that use Ada, more articles in places that = programmers read, offering to teach an Ada class at local colleges, and usi= ng Ada for more applications that real people use. =20 I am now old, soon to enjoy my 80th birthday. My time as an advocate will = soon have passed. Perhaps some of you who are younger can find the coursf= e and energy to do something to promote real software engineering using the= one language designed to support an engineering approach to software devel= opment: Ada. It is, in my view, still Ada. It is cerainly not C++. Never= has been. Why would anyone choose a language that is inherently error-pr= one and expect a result that is error-free? Richard Riehle, PhD