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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-22 12:26:12 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died (was): 64 bit addressing and OOP Date: 22 Apr 2003 12:26:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <9fa75d42.0304221126.7112b7d5@posting.google.com> References: <3E4E8F8C.9C096985@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0302250710.5549baaf@posting.google.com> <3E5C7033.BD5DC462@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0302260618.7506cba7@posting.google.com> <3E5CF5C6.84822F57@adaworks.com> <8qkczsAcGcn+Ew83@nildram.co.uk> <3EA04A1E.CAFC1FEF@adaworks.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 32.97.239.16 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1051039572 13263 127.0.0.1 (22 Apr 2003 19:26:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2003 19:26:12 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:62505 comp.object:61585 comp.lang.ada:36363 misc.misc:13556 Date: 2003-04-22T19:26:12+00:00 List-Id: Richard Riehle wrote in message news:<3EA04A1E.CAFC1FEF@adaworks.com>... > Kent Paul Dolan wrote: > > > I merely lack the level of specific > > formal education in computer language > > design that make most of what the OP > > thinks of as "simple principles" look > > simple when reduced to standards-ese, or > > look simple when trying to convince > > other mid-level and junior programmers > > that Ada is an "easily understood > > language". > > I suppose I should interpret that as a response to my > contention that Ada is not as hard to learn as many > have suggested. In fact, Ada, once some fundamental > ideas are understood, is not that difficult. However, > in its early days, when those fundamental ideas were > new, even revolutionary, they were difficult for even > experienced programmers to grasp. Now, so many of > those ideas have been adopted in the design of other > programming languages, that, when one mentions one > of them in the context of Ada, the response is often, "So > what? Language XYZ has that feature too." I think nobody complained about any particular feature. The major complaint was that it had all the itsy-bitsy little ideas that anybody had thought at the time. And no truly innovative or revolutionary ones. Take something trivial, e.g. string slicing. Not a terribly useful feature, but not entirely useless either. The trouble is, there was a whole lot of such mildly useful features that Ichbiah had seen somebody use somewhere (this one from PL/1 I think), or was able to think up. Also, Ada proponents made much of its strong typing. But it was not at all novel or revolutionary. It was a very common language idea at that time, and then-popular Pascal had it too. That wasn't bad by itself. But from a practical point of view, over-emphasizing strong typing made interfacing to C a virtual necessity for projects of any significant complexity. (C and later C++ style of type-safety turned out to be good enough for real-world projects.) But the huge collection of mostly mildly useful features made the language too large and complex, which is what got Hoare and other lights of the time (relatively unknown in the DoD circle) upset with Ada.