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From: softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc
Subject: Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate,
 and why it collapsed and died)
Date: 12 May 2003 06:43:34 -0700
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Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63570 comp.object:63237
 comp.lang.ada:37236 misc.misc:14101
Date: 2003-05-12T13:43:34+00:00
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Dr Chaos <mbkennelSPAMBEGONE@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message news:<slrnbbof6r.6ep.mbkennelSPAMBEGONE@lyapunov.ucsd.edu>...

> Here is one key example.  VMS didn't have a shell where actual
> ordinary users could write programs which functioned like the built in
> ones.  It was "RUN MY_USER_PROGRAM" versus the huge hairball of "SHOW
> THIS/THAT" or "SET THIS TO THAT".
> 
> If you wanted to have your own software work like that it was a huge
> rigamarole poring through one of the 20 or 30 orange covered
> notebooks.
> 
> Unix had argc and argv, and a simple library that you didn't even
> need to use if you didn't want to.
> 
> It was like Alexander cutting the Gordian knot. 
> 
> DCL was completely cognitively opaque.  What exactly was it doing, what
> programs is it running when?
> 
> Unix was dumb, and smart at the same time.
> 
> Simply: 
> 
>       Unix *felt* like freedom.  
>       VMS didn't.
> 

A lot of people felt the same way about C vs Pascal/Ada style languages!

Of course, today's C, C++, Java etc don't have type-checking
problems like early C, which may have led to my perception that 
type-checking simply is NOT a problem in modern software development.
But come to think of it, at one point it was.  Even so,
C *felt* like freedom.

Because the strong type-checking of today's C-family languages
has evolved rather than been dictated, it has had to retain
that freedom.